


If I Killed Someone For You

by lil_mockingbird



Category: Marvel, Red Velvet (K-pop Band), Runaways (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Domestic, F/F, Science Fiction, Thriller
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 14:14:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 12
Words: 25,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29261832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lil_mockingbird/pseuds/lil_mockingbird
Summary: Yerim's perfect life turns unspeakably upside down when one day new neighbours suddenly move into the house next door. Right from the start, the teenager can't stand the blonde, strange woman with her put-on smile and her annoying daughter, as well as not trusting them.To Yerim's surprise, the new neighbour greets her mothers like long-lost friends and the girl finds out that they were all very good colleagues when they were students. Her mothers also want Yerim to become friends with Seungwan's daughter Sooyoung, but Yerim prefers to ignore the girl. One fateful evening, however, the relationship between Sooyoung and Yerim is about to change when Yerim accidentally observes her mothers and her neighbour experimenting on a man in a secret basement of her own house. Something goes wrong with the experiment, however, and Yerim is shocked to see an innocent person die before her eyes.Horrified, Yerim escapes from the house, hides in panic at Sooyoung's and tells her about her terrible encounter. Sooyoung believes her and together they decide to find evidences of their parents' cruel deeds in order to convict them, but maybe Yerim's unwanted presence at the murder did not go as unnoticed as the girls believed...
Relationships: Bae Joohyun | Irene/Kang Seulgi, Bae Joohyun | Irene/Kim Yerim | Yeri, Kang Seulgi/Kim Yerim | Yeri, Kim Yerim | Yeri/Park Sooyoung | Joy, Park Sooyoung | Joy/Son Seungwan | Wendy
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	1. Morning Bustle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Red Velvet x Marvel's Runaways AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tumblr @lil-m0ckingbird

"Did you pack yourself something to eat for lunch?!" her mother yelled concernedly through the huge villa.  
"Of course!" claimed Yerim with her mouth full and hastily continued spooning her cornflakes, milk dripping from her chin and onto the table. She took a glimpse at the clock and noted with horror that she only had fifteen minutes left before her classes started.   
"Did you pack yourself something proper to eat?" With a doubtful look and her hands on her hips, Joohyun suddenly stood in the doorway, eyeing her daughter. Yerim nodded in haste as she hurriedly stuffed her cornflakes into her mouth. Sceptically, Joohyun checked Yerim's lunchbox with the so-called meal. "You should at least pack yourself some fruits," she mused. "How about an apple for a start?"  
"I don't like apples," Yerim choked out as her mother sighed defeatedly.  
"You know the saying," she admonished her daughter. "You're still young, you need the vitamins you need to grow, and an apple a day-"  
"Yeah yeah, an apple a day keeps the nagging doctor away." Yerim rolled her eyes. "Too bad I already have to live with two of them under one roof." She disposed of the rest of her remaining milk in the drain of the kitchen sink and fished a banana out of the fruit bowl to satisfy her mother. Joohyun gave her an encouraging smile as Yerim took the lunch box from her mother's hand and tucked the banana safely inside. "Satisfied?" she asked with a raised eyebrow and Joohyun nodded happily.  
Jingling her car keys, Seulgi appeared in the doorway of the kitchen. Demonstratively, she glanced at her wristwatch. "Hyunie, if you keep mothering her, we'll all be late and I'd really like to get to the hospital before the usual morning traffic chaos. I'm sure Yerim has enough food for school, otherwise I'm sure she has some money."  
"Do you still have money, sweetie?", Joohyun asked her daughter, looking her seriously in the eyes. Yerim nodded hastily. "Okay." Joohyun smiled fondly and pressed a kiss to Yerim's cheek in a goodbye. "We'll be at the clinic till eight tonight at the latest. I'm scheduled for some important surgeries in the morning and at noon, but your mother should be available in case of an emergency and should be home by lunchtime. The day today will probably not be as long as it has been in the last few weeks. So we'll have dinner together," she beamed.  
It was rare that Yerim's parents were both home on time for dinner and they could spend time together as a family. It was just the price Joohyun and Seulgi had to pay as doctors. They often spent little time with their daughter, but Yerim was used to their absence by now. She nodded affirmatively and grabbed Seulgi's car keys from the dining table. "I'm taking your car, Mum," she announced.  
"You will take the bus, young lady," Joohyun said warningly, but of course Seulgi had to stab her in the back.  
"Don't you dare to scratch my car's paint!" Seulgi winked at her as Joohyun indignantly elbowed her in the side and Yerim hastily went to get her school stuff before Joohyun could interfere and forbid her. "She's a teenager," Seulgi grinned. "Sometimes she takes my car without your permission. I think she'll be careful." Disbelievingly, Joohyun shook her head. 

"Be careful with the car and have fun at school, sweetie, and remember, we love you very much, Yerim." Joohyun repeated her sneaky act and gave Yerim another wet kiss on the cheek while her daughter desperately tried to wriggle out of her smothering embrace.  
"Ugh!" Disgusted, Yerim screwed up her face and wiped the wet spot on her face with the back of her hand, while Joohyun's lips were graced with a smirk. "I love you two too, but I'm about to choke," she protested.  
"Hyunie!" called Seulgi impatiently. She was already in the car with the engine running.  
Yerim looked after her mothers, shaking her head, as Joohyun finally got in and Seulgi drove out of the courtyard. She stowed her backpack in the boot and got in as well. Just as she was about to drive out of the yard, a whole convoy of trucks suddenly came barrelling up the road. Astonished, Yerim watched them stop in front of the neighbouring property. "Someone new must finally be moving in there," Yerim mused aloud before her eyes fell on the digital clock in the car. "Fuck," she cursed under her breath and hit the gas. She didn't have time to stare at the new neighbours now, but had to hurry to school before classes started.


	2. All My Heroes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Red Velvet x Marvel's Runaways AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tumblr @lil-m0ckingbird

Sighing, Yerim unlocked the door. With slumped shoulders, she quickly slipped into the house, hastily removing her shoes and kicking them carelessly down the hall before tossing her jacket over a coat rack hook. Her backpack was also flung carelessly into a dark corner. The seductive smell of fresh pizza lingered in the air. "I'm home, Mum!" shouted Yerim through the hallway before scurrying into the kitchen on socks.  
Seulgi was sitting on a high stool at the kitchen counter, writing something in a small black notebook. She quickly folded the notebook closed and put the pen aside before Yerim could take a glimpse at the pages. She gave her daughter a loving smile and pressed a kiss to her forehead as a greeting.  
"There's pizza for lunchtime?" asked Yerim curiously as she caught sight of the open carton beside Seulgi. "Umma doesn't want us to eat fast food..."  
"Because we are going out for dinner together tonight, I didn't feel like cooking properly today. I thought I'd get us pizza from that fantastic Italian place near the main road on my way home." Puzzled, Seulgi avoided her daughter's judging look. "Go wash your hands before dinner and don't tell Hyunie about this. It's our little secret," she warned Yerim, who shook her head in disbelief but mused a smile before hastily disappearing into the bathroom.

Seulgi sat hunched over her iPad, the notebook open on the table in front of her, her gaze tensely focused on the flickering screen, while Yerim sat impassively across from her. Absently, she scrolled through her mobile phone and was shoving the last slice of pizza into her mouth when, all of a sudden, the doorbell rang. Startled, she looked up at Seulgi, her mother staring at her in equal shock. Their eyes wandered together to the suspicious empty carton.  
"Umma said she wouldn't have a proper lunch break today..." Yerim swallowed nervously.  
The doorbell rang a second time and Seulgi flinched, alarmed. "It could be the postman with a package," she reasoned. "You go answer the door while I quickly get rid of the evidences. And if it is your mother after all and she asks, we had rice and chicken for lunch!"  
Yerim nodded hastily and leapt up from the dining table and ran down the hall to the door before the doorbell rang a third time. To her surprise, it wasn't her mother Joohyun standing impatiently waiting outside the door, but a blonde woman who was a complete stranger to her and a tall, gawky girl with long black hair and piercing brown eyes. "W-What can I do for you?" asked Yerim in confusion, taking a step back uncertainly, but the blonde woman gave her a friendly smile and held out her hand to introduce herself to the girl.  
"My name is Son Seungwan and this is my daughter Sooyoung." The woman pointed to her company. "We are the new neighbours in the street. You must be Yerim, Joohyun and Seulgi's daughter? Nice to finally meet you. I was very close friends with your mothers during my student days."  
Dumbfounded, Yerim stared at Seungwan and Sooyoung, sceptically eyeing her new neighbours and only acknowledging their greeting with a dismissive shrug. Sooyoung stared blankly at the wall, as if she had a hundred more interesting things to do. Yerim did not like her snobbish manner. She turned in the doorway, her face screwed up. " Mum!" shouted Yerim into the house. "Come here please!"  
Confused, Seulgi came running out of the dining room into the hallway. "What's going on?" she wanted to know worriedly as she caught sight of the two figures at their front door. Her face brightened as she recognised the blonde woman and a smile suddenly graced her lips. Seulgi pushed Yerim aside and pulled Seungwan into a tempestuous embrace. "Seungwan," Seulgi sighed happily. "I missed you," she confessed and Seungwan returned the crushing embrace with a contented smile as well. "Did you guys make it on the plane well? Are you done with your moving yet? How is your new house?"  
Seungwan chuckled softly and detached from Seulgi again. "Actually, we just wanted to quickly introduce ourselves as your new neighbours, but I have a lot to tell you and Joohyun. How about we have dinner tonight to catch up properly on the last few years?" she suggested.  
Before Seulgi could reply, she felt Yerim tugging impatiently at her sleeve. Questioningly, she turned to her daughter.  
"Tonight is our evening together, isn't it? Umma, you and I wanted to finally spend time together once again," Yerim whispered, but Seulgi shook her head.  
"I'm sorry to say we'll have to postpone our evening, sweetheart," Seulgi sighed regretfully. "Because not only is Seungwan a good friend of your parents, but we will be working together again as colleagues on a very important project." Seulgi swallowed hard as she noticed Yerim trying to banish the tears from her eyes with frantic blinking, hiding her disappointed expression. "We can still have dinner as a family of three, only we'll take Seungwan and her daughter Sooyoung with us." She stroked Yerim's back reassuringly. "I'm sure you understand that this is important for me and Hyunie."  
Yerim nodded bravely, but it just wouldn't be the same. She turned away from Seulgi, hastily wiping the tears from her eyes with her sleeve and quickly disappeared to her room before she would start crying in front of her mother, her new neighbour and that bitch Sooyoung.

"You will now put on some pants and then you will obediently accompany us to the restaurant and you will behave yourself in front of Seungwan and Sooyoung! That's my final word, young lady!" Enraged, Joohyun crossed her arms in front of her chest and stood imperiously in front of her stubborn daughter, but Yerim shook her head.  
Exasperated, she gritted her teeth, she clenched her fists and her sparkling gaze pierced her mother accusingly. "I don't want to," Yerim contradicted. "This was supposed to be our evening tonight. I thought we would be spending time together as a family for once, but apparently I got my hopes up for nothing and you, as always, care far more about your work than your own daughter."  
"Honey, you are important to us," Joohyun sighed. She wanted to give Yerim a hug, but the girl avoided her. "But you must also understand that as doctors, I and your mother have made an oath and only want to help people. We have already explained to you that the new project with Seungwan will surely save a lot of lives. I am sorry that we have to postpone our time together for this."  
"I don't care how many people you claim to save!" shouted Yerim. "Why did you even have a child in the first place if you don't care anyway because a thousand things are more important to you?" Tears veiled her gaze as Joohyun looked down at the floor in dismay and remained silent.  
"We love you, Yerim." Seulgi looked at her pleadingly. "How about you join us at the restaurant tonight and in return Joohyun and I take a weekend off this month and just the three of us catch up on our time together?" she tried to coax her daughter. "Well, you could try to make friends with Sooyoung tonight."  
Yerim shook her head vigorously. "I used to look up to you, you were my heroes and I admired you, but that is over. I don't need friends and I don't need parents. You don't need to bother anymore, in less than two years I'll be out of here and then I'll finally stop getting on your nerves," she sobbed. "Then you'll have all the time in the world for your stupid work!"  
Startled, Joohyun and Seulgi flinched as Yerim angrily slammed her bedroom door into the lock and turned the key. "Yerim!" cried Joohyun in horror, trying to rattle the handle, but Seulgi held her back. Joohyun could feel a stab in her heart.  
"She needs distance from us," Seulgi whispered dejectedly.  
Joohyun suppressed a sob and nodded in understanding. "This is our fault, she has been drifting further and further away from us and we have ignorantly allowed it to happen."  
Seulgi lovingly wiped the tears from her cheeks with a tissue. "We must get her back before it is too late" She pressed an encouraging kiss to Joohyun's forehead.


	3. Game Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Red Velvet x Marvel's Runaways AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tumblr @lil-m0ckingbird

"Yerimie?" Hesitantly, Joohyun knocked on her daughter's bedroom door. " Sweetie, will you please come out? Dinner's about to be served and Seungwan came over for a game night." Joohyun sighed and leaned her forehead against the cold wood in defeat. "We'd love to have you join us for dinner and games," she said, but Yerim didn't answer her. She ignored her mother and turned up the volume of her computer game.   
"Is she still ignoring you two?" asked Seungwan pityingly as Joohyun came strolling into the dining room with her head hanging and wordlessly joined her wife at the table. She looked up at the blonde with a watery expression and Seulgi nodded ruefully.  
"She hasn't spoken to us since the fight. She avoids us, eats alone in her room, gets up before us in the morning and takes the bus to school. Yerim completely ignores our presence." Seulgi scoffed disdainfully. "Our own daughter refuses to communicate with us and treats us like we are air."  
"She is not just upset because we stood her up, but because we never have time for her." Sobbing, Joohyun leaned against her wife's side. Seulgi carefully wrapped her arm around her trembling form and lovingly pulled her into an embrace, tenderly spreading small kisses on Joohyun's hair.  
"Our project is now entering its major final phase. Once we finish it we will sacrifice all our time just for Yerim, even if it costs us our jobs as doctors," Seulgi promised her wife, who nuzzled into her shoulder frantically to hide her tears in the fabric of her top. "Our daughter has to become the most important thing in our lives again. We have just neglected her recklessly for far too long." She intertwined their fingers together. "I hope she still needs us by then..."  
Seungwan sighed and handed Joohyun a tissue. "I'm sure you guys will make up. Sooyoung and I are slowly growing back together as well. Just hold on a little longer until we finish our project."  
Joohyun forced herself to smile. "I'm kind of not hungry. Wouldn't you prefer to start our work right away?" Seulgi and Seungwan nodded in agreement. The three of them rose from the dining table, Seulgi took her black notebook and iPad out of a drawer and together they disappeared into Joohyun's office.

Cursing lowly, Yerim rose from her desk and let the computer shut down. Her stomach growled incessantly, desperate for something to eat. "You'll get something in a minute," Yerim promised him as she unlocked the door and cautiously looked around the dark hallway.  
Hunger luring her out of her room, Yerim tiptoed through the darkness, but thankfully there was no sign of her mothers or their guest as she entered the dining room. To her surprise, the chairs were unoccupied and the entire room empty, but dinner was still untouched on the table. Surprised, Yerim grabbed a few slices of baguette from the bread basket and dipped them with her fingers directly into the sauce bowl before stuffing the slices into her mouth. "Umma?! Mum?! Miss Son?!" Alarmed, Yerim's voice echoed through the villa. She paused, listening tensely for a response, but the house remained silent. "Umma! Mum! Where are you?" shouted Yerim. Panicked, she began to search the rooms of the villa for her mothers. "They would never just leave without at least leaving me a note," she muttered anxiously and rushed into her umma's office without knocking.  
To her surprise, there was a light burning in Joohyun's office, although that room was also empty. "Why are Miss Son's things lying around here?" Yerim carefully closed the door behind her before curiously picking up Seungwan's jacket and handbag. A car key fell out of the open handbag, it landed clattering on the floor and Yerim flinched in shock. "Oops..." she hissed and bent down to pick it up again. As she did so, her index finger accidentally touched a large, round button in the middle of the small box. "Ouch!" Startled, Yerim withdrew her hand as a small needle bored into her fingertip. A thin streak of blood ran  
across her hand. At the same moment, two cupboard doors opened with a sharp click and the heavy bookshelf was automatically pushed aside. Mechanics groaned as a secret passage suddenly opened in front of Yerim. "Holy shit," the girl muttered in amazement. "That's not a car key, it's a remote control that apparently opens a secret passageway in my mother's office," she stated. Carefully stowing the remote in her pocket and pulling out her mobile phone, Yerim activated the torch and carefully crept into the gloomy corridor.   
Except for the cone of light from her torch, there was no lighting. A steep staircase led deeper and deeper into the black underground, while cold white tiles lined the walls. At the bottom of the stairs, a long corridor stretched out in front of Yerim. Some distance away there seemed to be an iron door, a round window had been set into it and a poor, pale glow of light fell through the porthole. Quietly Yerim pushed the cold metal of the door forward, she pushed the protective iron door open a crack and slipped hastily through. Glaring light shone piercingly from the ceiling. Yerim hastily covered the light of her torch and switched to the camera function on her phone. The floor beneath her feet was made of metal just like the iron door, it looked like a narrow walkway and a railing lined the right side. Behind the railing, a waist-high wall of plastic and a pane of glass, which went all the the way to the ceiling, separated the walkway from a precipice. "What is this place?" whispered Yerim, confused. She knelt behind the railing and peered cautiously over the low wall into the precipice while unobtrusively panning her camera around the room. Below her was a highly modern laboratory with a functioning operating table and strange, beeping machineries. Surgical instruments had been neatly lined up on a small table, large lamps hung from the ceiling, there was the smell of disinfectant and this place looked clinically sterile.  
Startled, Yerim flinched as a swinging door on the opposite side of the room suddenly swung open and three people in blue overalls and safety gear, masks, bonnets and gloves rushed into the room. They were pushing a rickety bed behind them in which a boy was lying. The boy was at most Yerim's age, if not a few years younger. He was squirming in pain, wriggling and trying to straighten his upper body again and again, but one of the people in blue overalls pressed him firmly back into the mattress.  
"Seungwan, can you hook him up to the ECG?"  
"Once Seulgi finally sedates him and he stops fidgeting like a lunatic..."  
Frozen, Yerim watched as Seulgi calmly took a syringe from a tray of surgical instruments and applied it to the boy's arm. Panicked, the boy tried to fight back, his fear-filled gaze darting around the room, and he tried to scream for help, but Seungwan pressed her hand over his mouth, stifling all his agonising cries. Joohyun fixated his arms and legs. She was half on top of him and gave her wife a stern look. Seulgi nodded before she pushed the plunger down and injected the contents of the syringe into the boy's body. A few seconds later, the boy stopped fidgeting. Except for gentle rising and falling of his chest, he no longer stirred and had closed his eyes. Shocked, Yerim watched as Seulgi and Seungwan hoisted the boy's body awkwardly onto the surgery table.  
"Actually, one of us should have stayed with him in the lab through the whole time," Joohyun claimed "He's been having constant seizures for the past few days and must have accidentally ripped out his implant during one of them, his whole bed was covered in blood." Examining, she glanced at the screen of the electrocardiogram. "At least he's not dead yet."  
"The seizures must be a side effect of the latest update. I'm already working on it, but I haven't been able to fully filter out all the bugs yet," Seungwan said. "Let's turn him on his side and cut him open so we can get the remnants of the implant and the thingies out of him." The other two nodded and Joohyun was about to apply the scalpel when the electrocardiogram suddenly started beeping frantically.  
"Not again," Seulgi cursed as the boy on the surgery table began to twitch violently in his anaesthesia. "We can't lose another one." But before the three of them could get to work on saving the boy, the high waves of the electrocardiogram flattened to a straight line and a steady, high-pitched beeping declared him dead.  
"Shit," Joohyun snarled, pinching the bridge of her nose. "That was the third one this month. We desperately need new test subjects."  
"I guess our project is doomed." Seungwan took off her gloves and glasses. Tiredly, she rubbed her eyes. "We should go back upstairs, we all need some sleep very badly. We'll get rid of the corpse tomorrow."  
With shaky hands, Yerim stopped the recording on her phone. She swallowed as the image of the dead boy burned itself into her memory. Her knees felt like jello and she stumbled backwards a few steps, unsteady and dazed. She stared at the ceiling in disbelief. Her parents and Seungwan had just killed a human being in front of her eyes in a secret laboratory beneath her home. Blindly, she searched for support when she suddenly accidentally hit the light switch and the illumination of the entire lab went out. Startled, Yerim pressed her hand over her mouth to stifle her outcry as she realised how three heads snapped around to her in the darkness and three pairs of eyes crossed with her gaze....


	4. Hide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Red Velvet x Marvel's Runaways AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tumblr @lil-m0ckingbird

With shaky hands, Yerim stopped the recording on her phone. She swallowed as the image of the dead boy burned itself into her memory. Her knees felt like jello and she stumbled backwards a few steps, unsteady and dazed. She stared at the ceiling in disbelief. Her parents and Seungwan had just killed a human being in front of her eyes in a secret laboratory beneath her home. Blindly, she searched for support when she suddenly accidentally hit the light switch and the illumination of the entire lab went out. Startled, Yerim pressed her hand over her mouth to stifle her outcry as she realised how three heads snapped around to her in the darkness and three pairs of eyes crossed with her gaze....

"What the hell?", Yerim heard Seulgi swear. "Maybe the power has gone out," Joohyun speculated. "We have to go back upstairs immediately, but change your clothes first!" Before Seulgi and Seungwan could respond to Joohyun's command, Yerim ran. She stumbled up the stairs.  
"Damn it," she whispered when she realised that the entrance to the secret passage had automatically closed again. "Please work, please work, please work," Yerim pleaded anxiously as she fished the remote control out of her pocket. "Ouch," she hissed as again a small needle dug into her finger and in the next moment the bookshelf shifted aside again. Panic-stricken, Yerim ran through the office and rushed down the interminable corridors of the house. She swiftly opened the door to the boiler room and rushed towards the power fuse box. The thin door slammed clatteringly against the wall as Yerim flipped all the circuit breakers' switches at once with a swift flick of her hand, and all the electricity in the house died with a low hum.  
"Maybe they didn't even saw me in their lab," Yerim thought aloud as she bolted out the back door and sprinted breathlessly through the garden. She was about to cross Seungwan's garden when she noticed the open patio door, which led directly into Sooyoung's room. Without thinking further, Yerim simply slipped through the open door.  
"Are you insane?!" shrieked Sooyoung in fright as Yerim suddenly stood in her room. "Are you crazy!!! What the hell are you doing here?!" Outraged, she eyed the sweaty intruder and put on a dismissive expression. Angrily, she crossed her arms in front of her chest.  
"I-I urgently need a place to hide," Yerim stammered, looking beggingly at Sooyoung. "I'm on the run and I need to hide!" Panicked, she spun in circles. Her hands clutched at her mobile phone in desperation.  
"Why do you need a place to hide? Who are you on the run from?" Sooyoung's expression suddenly softened and she looked genuinely concerned. She stopped Yerim's frantic movements and gently held her by the wrists. Patiently, she waited for a response as Yerim's gaze darted paranoidly around the room.  
"M-my... My parents and... and Seungwan, the new neighbour Seungwan, t-there was this secret basement and there was this boy, w-who is now dead and now.... now they're probably after me." Tears gathered in Yerim's eyes. "I... I cut off the p-power so t-they'd think it was a blackout, but.... But I-I have proof on my phone. I filmed them killing... killing th-that boy." Yerim stumbled over her own words several times as she spoke and choked on her own spit, gasping and coughing.  
Sooyoung gently put her hands on her shoulders. "You need to calm down. I can barely understand a word you're saying when you talk so fast and frantically." Her counterpart nodded. Yerim took a deep breath. Her heart raced in her chest and her body trembled, but she tried to calm herself. "Would you like a glass of water?" asked Sooyoung, eyeing Yerim worriedly. "Come with me, in the kitchen you can show me your evidence."

Sooyoung conscientiously checked that her mother had not returned home before she slipped into the kitchen with Yerim. She avoided turning on the light, but blindly grabbed a glass from a cupboard and filled it with tap water from the faucet over the sink before shoving it into Yerim's hand. Yerim held her mobile phone screen under Sooyoung's nose and played the video she had secretly recorded in the basement. "You have to believe me, I'm not crazy and I didn't imagine this either."   
"That's definitely my mother," Sooyoung muttered. Her eyes were glued to the screen in focus and she chewed nervously on her lower lip. "And you didn't just steal those scenes from some horror movie?" she wanted to know sceptically when they had watched the video several times in a row, but Yerim firmly shook her head.  
"This is not a joke or some stupid prank," Yerim hissed, her gaze darting paranoidly through the darkness. "There really is a secret basement under my house and our parents are experimenting on humans down there and probably murdering them too."  
"And we have to go down to the basement together," Sooyoung determined. Yerim looked at her aghast, as if she had suddenly lost her mind. "Our parents are murderers, the boy in the video is clearly dead and they are responsible. We need to find out more about our parents' experiments and once we've gathered enough evidence, we'll convict them and call the police." Sooyoung flinched as she heard a noise. "My mother is coming back," Sooyoung whispered. "She's with your parents, we need to keep cool." Panicked, she pushed the frozen Yerim back into her room.  
"Please," the girl begged desperately. "You have to help me and hide me from them somehow..." Sooyoung nodded, closing the door and hastily pulling her top over her head before stripping off her trousers. "What are you doing?" asked Yerim in confusion as Sooyoung quickly got rid of more clothes.  
"Take off your clothes and lie down in my bed," Sooyoung ordered. "If they come in, I want them to think they interrupted us having sex. You've been with me all night."  
"O-Okay." Yerim's face was red as a tomato as Sooyoung suddenly took off her bra in front of her too. " M-me as well?" she stammered, averting her eyes in embarrassment.  
Sooyoung nodded assertively. "Everything. It must look real." Impatiently, she helped Yerim take off her upper shirt. While Yerim got rid of her bra, Sooyoung unbuttoned her jeans for her. "You can leave your panties on, but hurry. They're already in the house."  
"Do you want me to sit on your hips, or?"Awkwardly, Yerim looked up at Sooyoung as she pulled her into her bed.Awkwardly, Yerim looked up at Sooyoung as she pulled her into her bed. The black-haired girl sighed before simply pinning Yerim into her mattress, straddling her legs and settling onto her lap. Before Yerim could protest, Sooyoung pressed her lips to hers and engaged her in a heated kiss as her hands found their way into Yerim's hair.  
The next moment, the door to Sooyoung's room was yanked open. "Sooyoung, are you all alright- Oh my God!" With a choked moan, Sooyoung and Yerim dashed apart as Seungwan put her hands over her eyes and stood frozen in the doorway. Acting panicked, Sooyoung covered her and Yerim's naked chests.  
" Mum!" complained Sooyoung in horror. "Can't you knock?!"  
"I-I'm terribly sorry..." muttered Seungwan, turning away. "Joohyun! Seulgi! I think I've found your daughter!"  
Immediately, Yerim's mothers came rushing into Sooyoung's room. "We've been looking everywhere for you!" said Joohyun anxiously. "The power went out in our house, a fuse blew and you suddenly disappeared. Are you alright? Are you okay? What are you doing here with Sooyoung anyway?"  
Astonished, Yerim looked at her parents and pulled Sooyoung's duvet a little higher. "The power went out?" she asked innocently. "I didn't notice anything about that," she claimed.   
"But why are you with Sooyoung?", Seulgi wanted to know in confusion. "I thought you didn't like her."  
"Um..." Seeking for help, Yerim looked to the black-haired girl. Sooyoung cleared her throat. "I invited her," she explained to her parents. "For dinner I had ordered a pizza and the delivery boy accidentally rang the wrong doorbell, but Yerim was kind enough to take the pizza for me and I offered to share it with her. We spent the whole evening together watching movies, eating pizza and-" Embarrassed, they both looked at the floor.  
"Okay, we'd better go," Seungwan said. "I'm terribly sorry that we disturbed you. We just wanted to know if everything was all right with you." Joohyun and Seulgi hastily agreed.  
"I'm staying at Sooyoung's tonight!" yelled Yerim quickly after her mothers as her parents left the room again. 

"We have to convict our parents," Sooyoung whispered as she lay in her bed in the darkness with Yerim, dressed again some time later. The younger girl sighed heavily and nodded.  
"We don't know the whole truth, but our parents killed people. There is no reason in this damned world which justifies the murder of an innocent person. Once we have enough evidence, they will get their just punishment and end up in prison," Yerim whispered. Tears gathered in her eyes. "My mothers are doctors, aren't they supposed to save people's lives?" She swallowed hard as she suddenly felt Sooyoung intertwining their fingers. "I don't want to do this alone."  
"No one forced them to do horrible things. It was their own decision, they purposely fooled us, but I promise I won't leave your side. We'll get through this together and convict our parents so they can't hurt anyone else."  
A faint smile formed on Yerim's lips. Suddenly she didn't find Sooyoung so bitchy after all, she kind of liked the black-haired girl. "My whole life feels like a lie. Have they been killing people since they started studying together? Will they kill us too if they find out we know about their secret?"  
"We have to keep a cool head about it. We have to act completely normal towards our parents so they won't get suspicious," Sooyoung hissed. "Together, we'll manage to convict them. They will get what they deserve," she promised. Her thumb traced small, reassuring circles on the back of Yerim's hand. "We're in this ridiculous shit together."  
  
Nervously, Joohyun paced back and forth in their dining room while Seulgi sat at the table and Seungwan leaned against the wall with her arms folded in front of her chest. They were silent. The electricity went on again and the lights burned.  
"Do you think the power cut had been a coincidence?", Joohyun suddenly asked around the small group.  
Astonished, Seulgi and Seungwan looked at her. "What do you mean," Seulgi asked her wife uncertainly.  
"Possibly it was one of the kids who turned off the electricity. Remember, the lights in the lab also went off, yet it is supplied with electricity by an emergency generator in case of a power cut. Maybe one of the kids was in the basement and hit the light switch." Joohyun stopped in front of Seulgi and Seungwan.  
Seungwan shook her head in disbelief. "You saw what the kids were busy doing all evening. I don't think Sooyoung or Yerim were in the lab. How could they have got down there? The entrance is sealed, after all, and can only be opened with the help of a remote control and our DNA."  
Joohyun sighed. "You're probably right, Seungwan. But we should be more careful and keep an eye on our daughters..."


	5. Ultraviolet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Red Velvet x Marvel's Runaways AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tumblr @lil-m0ckingbird

"Good morning, Yerim," Joohyun greeted her daughter with a genuine smile as the latter sleepily stumbled through the back door into the kitchen. Joohyun took a sip of her tea. "Won't you take one of the pancakes and join me at the table. I made the pancakes especially for you. We haven't had breakfast together in ages," she said with a pout.  
"Thanks, but I'll pass," Yerim replied briefly. She did not dignify her mother with a glance. "You could have saved that effort, I'm not hungry anyway and I'll eat later in school." Instead she fished a banana from the fruit bowl. "I'm going to change and catch the bus."  
"Your mother and I will be in the hospital until eight or nine tonight," Joohyun called after her hastily. "After that, we could order a pizza for dinner for a treat. We could eat together and watch a movie or a series as a family."  
"Save your money, I'm eating at Sooyoung's tonight and I don't care about your attempts to be a family again!" yelled Yerim back, slamming her room door behind her.  
Startled, Joohyun flinched. Some tea spilled over her cup and onto the tabletop. She sighed defeatedly as she rose to fetch a cloth to wipe it up. "She's still mad at us," she whispered disappointedly. 

Without saying goodbye to her mothers, Yerim snuck quietly out the front door and made her way to the bus stop, when suddenly Sooyoung came towards her and intercepted her.  
"Give me a kiss," the black-haired girl demanded bluntly.  
"Please what?" asked Yerim, her face contorted in shock. "Why should I give you a kiss! Last night was a one-time thing."  
"It wasn't a one-time thing," Sooyoung objected, grinning. A challenging smile graced her lips. "We'll have an easier ride if we pretend to be in a relationship in front of our parents. Besides, Joohyun is looking out the kitchen window right now and watching us. So don't be so coy and give your girlfriend a kiss on the lips."  
Yerim rolled her eyes in annoyance before rising on her tiptoes and pulling Sooyoung down to her level by her collar. Harshly, she pressed her lips to the black-haired girl's. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched with satisfaction as her mother grimaced in surprise and quickly averted her gaze.  
"May I take my beautiful girlfriend to school on this sunny morning?" asked Sooyoung as they breathlessly broke away from each other. "We still have to figure out a plan on how exactly to get our parents convicted. I have plenty of time. After all, they at school slept through my submission and to check the new application will take quite a while, which I have an extra break. It sounds like I've been suspended..." Sooyoung pulled her car keys out of her pocket and unlocked the car, which was parked on the side of the road, before opening the passenger side door for Yerim and gesturing her to sit inside.  
"By the way, what is your mother's profession?", Yerim wanted to know as Sooyoung drove off. She flipped down the sunshade to avoid being blinded and eyed her new girlfriend sceptically. "She's not a doctor, like my mothers."  
"She studied biomedicine and synthetic biology, while Joohyun and Seulgi studied medicine at the same time at her university. I was looking through some old records from her student days this morning. Our parents were among the best in their year and they shared a small flat in a dormitory. A big Pharma company was interested in one of Seungwan's ideas for a project back then. They paid a lot of money and your mothers helped her to implement it."  
"What was the project about?" asked Yerim, frowning. Her parents had never told her about their student days.  
"There is no interesting or concrete information about the project in my mother's notes. There was just an old clipped article from the campus newspaper about it being a project about genetic engineering." Sooyoung turned into the school's car parking lot. "Possibly they are still researching similar projects and meanwhile experimenting on humans. Anyway, we should go and check out the secret basement together mid morning today. Do you have the remote control with you?"  
Yerim nodded. "My mothers have the morning off today, they won't be leaving to the hospital until around lunchtime. So the earliest I can sneak off is after art class and play truant for the rest of the school day. I'll meet you in my garden at noon." With those words, Yerim pressed a quick goodbye kiss to Sooyoung's cheek and hurriedly got out when the bell rang for first period. 

Like two intruders, Sooyoung and Yerim crept through the villa into Joohyun's office. The windows were tilted and a mild breeze blew in, while a sliding door led outside into the garden. Yerim pulled the remote control out of her pocket. She pointed it at the bookshelf and glanced nervously at Sooyoung before pressing the big black button in the middle again. Yerim sucked in a sharp breath as the needle bored into her skin with an unpleasant sting. Blood dripped onto the floor. With groaning hinges, the cupboard doors of the shelf folded aside, the shelf slid sloppily to the side and in front of Sooyoung's astonished eyes, the secret passage opened with the steep staircase leading down into the lurking darkness.  
"Wait..." whispered Yerim. She held Sooyoung back by her wrist. "I need to get something urgently." Wordlessly, she ran out of the study and returned a few minutes later with a black notebook. Puzzled, Sooyoung eyed the book in her hands. "Because Seulgi often can't remember important things, she writes them down," Yerim explained to her. "Ever since I can remember, I've always watched her writing down any notes in the book. I've never had a peek inside, but I know where she tries to hide it from prying eyes. And there may be useful information in that thing." Sooyoung nodded, Yerim tucked the notebook under her arm and reached for the black-haired girl's hand. "Ready?" she asked her as they stood at the stair landing. Sooyoung looked nervous. She squeezed Yerim's hand lightly and swallowed nervously before taking the first step into the darkness. 

As soon as they left the gloomy corridor behind and reached the heavy iron door, Sooyoung let go of Yerim's hand again and instead pulled her phone out of her pocket to take pictures.  
"Our parents built all this?" asked Sooyoung in bewilderment. Her mouth open, she stared down into the lab from the walkway.  
Yerim nodded, she switched on the light and followed the walkway to another door, but this one was locked, unlike the iron door. "But what is the point of building an expensive laboratory in your own basement?" She braced herself to push the glass door open.  
"If our parents are nutcase serial killers, then maybe the lab is some kind of perverted fetish," Sooyoung speculated. She rattled the handle of the door. "We can only get in there with a password," she noted, taking a step back to look more closely at the electronic keypad beside the doorframe.  
"I'm sure our parents aren't perverted serial killers, they're nutcase scientists using the lab for experiments," Yerim hissed. Hectically, she flipped through Seulgi's notebook until she seemed to have found the right page and typed in a combination of numbers. The electronic door lock buzzed, then a small light jumped to green and the door opened with a click. "Joohyun thinks it's adorable that Seulgi is so clumsy and quite forgetful. I just find her embarrassing most of the time, but at least she's naive enough to just carelessly write a password for a secret lab in a notebook."  
Hastily, Sooyoung and Yerim ran down a flight of stairs until they finally stood at the base of the lab. "I want to know what's behind the swinging door," Yerim explained, pointing to the other end of the room. "If we only take photos here, these will never suffice as supporting evidences. Besides, apart from the surgery table and a few technical machines and instruments, we won't find any useful information here. I'm sure they only use this area for their practical work, but there must be another place where they for example collect and evaluate the biotechnical data from their experiments." Without waiting for Sooyoung, Yerim boldly strode through the room and stepped through the swinging door.  
"Oh, by all the fucking gods on this fucking filthy planet..." Startled, Sooyoung covered her mouth with her hand as she stepped through the door behind Yerim. Speechless, they looked at the three huge glass cages, which had been lined up next to each other in a narrow corridor like the cells in a prison. The basement was so deep that there was no daylight. Glaring neon tubes provided flickering light. Instinctively Yerim reached for Sooyoung's hand again, slowly they crept together through the gloomy corridor. Centimetre-thick panes reached up to the ceiling. Carefully separated from each other, each glass cage contained a neatly made hospital bed next to strange machines. Electronic locks sealed the doors and cameras hung from the ceiling. "This is so fucking disgusting," Sooyoung muttered. She clung tighter to Yerim and snapped a few photos with the presence of mind. "Our parents are keeping people trapped in their lab like test animals."  
Startled, they both flinched as a sudden strangled sound rang out. "It's coming from back there," Yerim said. She pointed to another door at the end of the corridor. Sooyoung dug her fingernails into Yerim's forearm in fear as the younger girl hurriedly pulled her through the corridor. Cautiously, they entered a second lab, which, in addition of some computers and lockers full of files, also housed some cages with chickens and rabbits. "I think we found the data from the experiments," Yerim cheered, rushing excitedly towards one of the computers with the notebook in her hands. She switched it on and again used a password from the book to log in.  
"Poor animals," Sooyoung sighed as one of the bunnies stared at her with a bleak, lifeless expression.  
"As soon as our parents are in prison, we'll free the animals," Yerim promised. "But first we must find the necessary evidences and leave no traces. If one of the animals is missing, they will surely notice." She pulled a USB stick from her pocket and inserted it into the PC's matching slot before selecting all the computer's data with a few simple clicks and copying it to the tiny data storage device. "You should take some more pictures."  
Sooyung agreed and began to look around the small lab. "I wonder what the purpose of all these experiments was," she commented, taking pictures of the names of the files on the shelves. "This stuff must definitely be several years older than the data on the computer." A thick layer of dust covered the papers. "Probably their experiments and their secret projects have really been going on since their student days."  
"Maybe they've already converted most of the data to digital and are only keeping the files because they contain some incriminating material." Yerim pulled the USB stick out of the slot again and let the computer shut down before she also examined the thick folders on the shelves. She tilted her head and eyed one of the labels sceptically. "Ultraviolet..." she read the scribbled letters aloud.  
"What does Ultraviolet mean?", Sooyoung wanted to know.   
Clueless, Yerim shook her head. "I don't know, but I think I've seen the word somewhere several times before. I think one of the folders on the computer had the same title."  
Sooyoung stood on tiptoe and pulled the folder from the shelf. "Our parents kept some patient files here. Is this even legal?" She flicked sceptically through the many lab reports and documents. Some of the margins had some indefinable acronyms or seemingly random words and numbers scribbled down with a red pen.  
"My mothers must have stolen these from the hospital." Yerim took the folder from Sooyoung's hands."Maybe that's where they chose their victims for their experiments. There's a list in here with quite a few names on it." Her gaze skimmed over the many incomprehensible words until she suddenly paused, frightened. "There are our names on it too," Yerim stammered. Fearfully, she looked up at Sooyoung...


	6. They Sold Us Lies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Red Velvet x Marvel's Runaways AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tumblr @lil-m0ckingbird

"My mothers must have stolen these from the hospital." Yerim took the folder from Sooyoung's hands."Maybe that's where they chose their victims for their experiments. There's a list in here with quite a few names on it." Her gaze skimmed over the many incomprehensible words until she suddenly paused, frightened. "There are our names on it too," Yerim stammered. Fearfully, she looked up at Sooyoung...  
Horrified, Sooyoung snatched the folder. "What kind of morbid game are our parents playing here?" Disgusted, she screwed up her face and aggressively flipped through the cryptic pages. "Absolutely absurd."  
"Wait!" Yerim stopped her. "Take the notes out of the folder. We'll take this stuff upstairs and have a look at the rest of the data in my room. I just want to get out of here, this place scares me."  
"Okay," Sooyoung agreed with her. She also felt like her panic was slowly but fatally cutting off her oxygen. She unstapled the stack of notes from the folder and tucked them under her arm. "Just make sure I don't lose anything," she admonished Yerim before paranoidly checking one last time to make sure the lab looked pristine before they escaped together from the secret basement. 

Yerim carefully locked her room door before spreading out the notes from the folder on her bed and frantically switching on her computer. "We need to figure out the reason or purpose for the experiments and what role we play in them. We have gathered enough evidences for the police." She sat down at her computer and opened the flash drive with the stolen data. "I'll create a back-up for the files, then I'll look through them and hopefully find an answer to our questions." Yerim sighed heavily. "Meanwhile, you go through the pile of papers," she ordered Sooyoung.  
A strange stifling silence weighed in the room. Only the sounds of Yerim's frantic typing on her keyboard and Sooyoung's flipping through the many papers disturbed it.  
Frowning, Sooyoung let her gaze wander over the many data before she picked up two particular papers and held them against the light. They were two photographs showing the enlarged structure of a DNA double helix. Different sections of the DNA had been marked with yellow dots, arrows led through a colourful chaos of notes and again their names were written at the bottom. Sooyoung cleared her throat. "I think I know what all these notes with our names mean by now," she claimed. Curious, Yerim turned away from her computer and looked at the photographs from a distance before raising her eyebrows sceptically and eyeing her incredulously with her arms folded in front of her chest, but Sooyoung nodded vigorously. "There are records of two different projects in the folder and only our names seem to be related to Project Ultraviolet. Either we are the first success of Ultraviolet or the main reason for the project."  
"What makes you think that?", Yerim wanted to know. Interested, she glanced over Sooyoung's shoulder, but she understood nothing of the complicated, biomedical data.  
A cocky and far too confident grin graced Sooyoung's lips. "When we moved into the new house, Seungwan made me help her move in and set up her office. I spent days lugging boxes full of folders, papers and thousands of books up the driveway and shelving them. As soon as Seungwan left the room, I might have peeked into the papers and books out of curiosity." She pointed her finger at the photographs. "These are all records and evaluations of experiments with gene modifications. The whole Project Ultraviolet is about the possibilities of genetic modifications on unborn babies," Sooyoung explained, unable to hide her pride at this discovery.   
"I think I'm going to puke," Yerim retorted, her face contorting in disgust. "So Joohyun, Seulgi and Seungwan have been experimenting on embryos in this secret lab, trying to genetically modify them to their liking? And they used us for their experiments as well. That certainly crosses all ethical, moral and legal boundaries." She shuddered as an icy chill ran down her spine. "I knew I was adopted. Joohyun and Seulgi didn't make a secret of it, they were honest with me about it. But I thought the reason I was adopted was to start a family, not some sick experiment with genetically modifications," Yerim spat bitterly.  
Sooyoung shook her head. "I don't think you or I were adopted."  
Yerim contorted her face into a mocking grimace. "So you're claiming that Joohyun and Seulgi were my biological parents and that Seungwan is also your real mother?"  
"To get into the secret basement, you need a remote control," Sooyoung remarked, holding out her palm. "Give it to me," she demanded. Confused, Yerim pulled the remote out of her pocket and handed it to Sooyoung. "You have to press the button to make the secret passage open, but the little devil's tool jabs a needle into your finger first."  
"I've felt that before, too," Yerim jeered impatiently. Slightly annoyed, she watched Sooyoung hold the shiny button up to the light.  
"I am convinced that the remote control only works with DNA recognition."  
Yerim's eyes widened in shock as she became aware of what Sooyoung was trying to say. "The secret passage could not have opened at all if I were not related to either Joohyun or Seulgi. One of them is actually my biological mother."  
"I would bet that the remote would work with my DNA too," Sooyoung explained. "My theory is that Joohyun, Seulgi and Seungwan developed a way of modifying the genomes during their student days. They just took their own DNA and modified the genes at their will in the lab to create us. So technically we are their biological children, which is why the DNA recognition thinks we are our mothers. Maybe it was just a blank theory during their student days, which they wanted to test out, but it worked and they created two living beings completely out of nothing according to their own designs and raised them as their children."  
"So in their eyes I'm not their daughter, I'm just a test subject with a number..." sighed Yerim. She rubbed her temples in exhaustion. "So in fact we shouldn't even exist in this damned world." The unbearable sight of the many documents burned itself unforgettably into her memory, while Sooyoung searched unsuccessfully for more information in the pile of papers.  
"I want to know if there were any other experiments under Project Ultraviolet," she murmured. "Are we the only ones who were created genetically modified, or are there other experimental subjects?"  
"Could you please stop referring to them and us as experimental subjects. We are all real, genuine human beings! Humans with a consciousness and a conscience and feelings, we are not monsters from some lab!" Yerim shook her head in panic. " No monsters..." Bewildered, she clutched her forehead as tears shone in her eyes and her breathing went in frantic, rapid bursts.  
"Hey..." whispered Sooyoung gently, taking her in her arms. "Calm down." Slowly, she stroked Yerim's back. "You're right, we're humans, not monsters or test subjects. I'm sorry I put it that way." Yerim's fingers clawed into her top as the younger girl hid her face in her shoulder, sobbing.  
"I want them all to burn in hell," Yerim whispered in a choked voice.  
"We just need to find out what happened to the boy in the video, then we will bring them into jail," Sooyoung promised. "He certainly wasn't part of Project Ultraviolet."  
"Joohyun and Seulgi talked about working on a new project. They probably used the boy for experiments as part of the new project. Maybe we can find information about that on the flash drive, but the data is quite confusing," Yerim opined. She broke away from Sooyoung's embrace and sat down at her computer again.  
With a worried expression, Sooyoung looked over her shoulder as she began to type. "Can you search the data for photos or profiles? Maybe we can find out the boy's name that way."  
Yerim nodded and tried to distinguish and sort the many cryptic files by type. After a tenacious search, she actually found a profile with a photo of the boy, but instead of a name, only a number as a designation. "Apparently the boy was a runaway whom they picked up off the street," Yerim read aloud the notes in the profile. "He had no relatives or name or meaning to anyone. They just kidnapped him to use him because he wouldn't be missed. Probably the boy was not the first runaway they kidnapped." Testingly, Yerim searched for the number in the files and found more digital documents relating to the experiments. "This is so creepy," she commented on the many logs that accurately documented the experiments on the boy.  
"Joohyun was talking about an implant yesterday," Sooyoung suddenly remembered the brittle sentences from the video. "These implants must be related to the runaway abductions. Maybe they are trying to develop a new, more universal type of genetic modification down in their lab and are putting these implants into people in cruel experiments to do so. It must be similar to what happens with transplanted organs. The human body rejects the implants and shows deadly side effects."  
Yerim swallowed hard. She closed the files again and switched off her computer before turning to Sooyoung. "All this data proves how many people our parents killed with their illegal experiments over the past years," she whispered. Her voice trembled. "If we hand this evidences over to the police, then our parents will be put in prison forever and we will never see them again."  
Sooyoung took Yerim's hands in hers. "I would so love to see Seungwan burn in hell, but we are still part of the experiments. What if they lock us away too?"  
"What if we just erase our data. We manipulate the evidences and-" Suddenly Yerim's mobile rang. Startled, she saw Joohyun's name flash on the screen.  
"Answer it!" urged Sooyoung. "Act normal, I don't want her to suspect anything."  
Yerim nodded, chewing nervously on her lower lip. "Hello?" she spoke quietly into the receiver after answering the call.  
"Are you okay, honey?" Concerned, Joohyun's voice rang out from the other side of the receiver. "The school called me at work. They inquired about your whereabouts and told me that you didn't show up for class after lunch, but just disappeared without reporting out."  
"I-I..." stammered Yerim. "I wasn't feeling so well after lunch," she claimed. "I'm home and sick in bed because I had to throw up at school. I feel really miserable," she lied. Sooyoung gave her an encouraging grin. "I must have accidentally forgotten to sign out at school, I'm sorry."  
Joohyun sighed. "My poor sweetheart," she replied worriedly. "Luckily, I'm already on my way home. I'm taking the rest of the day off to look after you."  
Before Yerim could object, Joohyun had already hung up. The colour had drained from her face, panicked, she turned to Sooyoung before glancing at the mess on her bed. "I need you to help me get rid of all the traces quickly and then I need you to get out of the house immediately. We'll talk about a new plan later." Hectically, Yerim stuffed the papers into a backpack. Along with the remote control and flash drive, she handed the items to Sooyoung before the black-haired girl made her escape out the back door and Yerim stripped off her clothes to crawl under her duvet. Just as she had pulled the covers up to her chin and Sooyoung had texted her that she had the evidences safely hidden, Yerim heard Joohyun's car pull up to the courtyard and less than two minutes later, her worried mother was already standing in her room...


	7. Don't Run

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Red Velvet x Marvel's Runaways AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tumblr @lil-m0ckingbird

"Are you all right, sweetheart?" Joohyun wanted to know worriedly. Carefully, she put her hand on Yerim's forehead and eyed her sick daughter cautiously. "You seem very pale, but at least you don't seem to have a fever. Are you still feeling nauseous?"  
Yerim shook her head wordlessly as her fingers anxiously clutched her duvet tightly and her body strained painfully, trembling under the covers. She avoided looking her mother directly in the face while her heart beat panic-stricken in her chest.  
"Do you want me to make you some soup?" Compassionately, Joohyun stroked Yerim's dishevelled hair, but Yerim again just shook her head.  
"Please go," she uttered hoarsely. "I just want to sleep."  
Joohyun sighed defeatedly, but nodded understandingly and turned to leave. "Bed rest and lots of sleep are probably the best thing for you right now," she decided. "If you get plenty of rest, then you should be able to go back to school by tomorrow for sure." Joohyun lowered the blinds for her, gathered her dirty clothes from the floor and walked out of the room. "I love you, Yerim," she said, mustering a gentle smile.  
"Please close the door," Yerim replied. She turned on her side and turned her back to her mother before pulling the covers over her head. Her heart was still pounding furiously against her ribcage as the blood rushed in her ears and the fear of her mothers became more present in her mind.  
Throughout the following night, Yerim could not get to sleep. Fear kept her awake continuously and she flinched in panic at every unfamiliar sound. Salty tears ran down her cheeks, dripping onto the mattress and staining her sheets with dark, damp stains. "I want to get out of here," she murmured lowly, staring desperately holes into the darkness of her room.

"You're late," Yerim muttered annoyed as Sooyoung, breathless, finally came rushing through the door into the school' s washroom. Yerim was leaning exhausted against the thin plastic wall of a toilet cubicle, eyeing Sooyoung with a bleak expression and black circles under her eyes. "Soon my teacher will miss me in his lessons."  
"You look really fucked up," Sooyoung commented on Yerim's tiredness.  
Exasperated, Yerim rubbed her eyes and groaned. "I haven't gotten a wink of sleep all night. It sounds ridiculous, but I was so afraid of falling asleep." Tears glinted in her gaze. "Everything just feels surreal."  
Sooyoung nodded in understanding. "I feel the same way. I had a hard time sleeping last night too, I was way too wired," she admitted, scratching the back of her head awkwardly. "Yesterday, Joohyun almost caught us. If she hadn't called you and we were still in the lab, then..."  
The next moment, Yerim was pulled into a crushing hug by Sooyoung. "Fuck," the younger girl muttered. "We have enough evidences. Let's destroy all the records of Ultraviolet and then we'll run away from home before we get busted and our parents find out about what we know. I just want to get away from Joohyun and Seulgi and this house."  
"Okay." Sooyoung nodded. "First we'll pack our things, then we'll destroy the files about us, and then we'll do like all the other runaways and escape from home. We also need to get rid of our mobile phones so our parents can't track us down." She looked deep into Yerim's eyes, her gaze sparkling, as she slightly leaned over to hastily place a kiss on Yerim's lips. "Just in case this is our last day on earth," Sooyoung grinned and Yerim returned the kiss with a smile.

Joohyun was about to leave for lunch in the hospital canteen after a long and tiring morning when a nurse agitatedly held her back and held a phone under her nose.  
"A call for you!" the nurse gasped breathlessly. "It's your daughter's headmaster again."  
"Thank you," Joohyun sighed and took the phone from the nurse. Concerned, she listened to the headmaster's report that her daughter had disappeared again without signing out. "I'll take care of it," she promised before hanging up and dialling Yerim's mobile number instead. Impatiently, Joohyun tapped her foot on the floor while it rang on the other end of the line. "I don't think Yerim is sick again," she said to herself and hung up when her daughter did not answer her mobile. She turned around in the corridor and hurriedly ran to the car park to get into her car and look for her daughter. "That little brat is probably skipping class to make out with Sooyoung again," Joohyun cursed under bated breath. The engine howled menacingly as she hit the gas and sped home.  
  
Taken aback, Joohyun noticed that the house was empty. Her daughter was not there and several items of clothing were missing from Yerim's wardrobe. Yerim's backpack was also gone and someone had raided the fridge in the kitchen and had stolen some water bottles. Sceptically, Joohyun wrinkled her nose as she walked through the living room to get to her office. Suddenly, the pungent smell of fire was in the air.  
"What happened here?" muttered Joohyun in confusion, poking the tip of a metal stick into the still glowing ashes of the fireplace. Obviously someone had been burning paper in the chimney. "Yerim?!" she shouted through the house. "Yerim!"  
Joohyun had a terrible suspicion, she cursed under her breath and hurried to her office. The computer on her desk was still running and someone had forgotten to turn off the printer. Worried, Joohyun clicked through the print history. "Please don't..." she managed to choke out. With sweaty palms, she dug her phone out of her pocket. Panicking, she went through her contacts and dialled Seungwan's number.  
It didn't take a minute for Seungwan to answer her call. "Hello?" she asked kindly, but Joohyun harshly interrupted her after her greeting.  
"Seungwan, you need to pick up Seulgi from work immediately and come with her to our house."  
"Yes, but why?" her counterpart on the other end of the line wanted to know concernedly.  
"Sooyoung and Yerim are gone. I have a bad suspicion about what might be the reason and that's why I need the two of you to help me quickly to check something." Without waiting for another question from Seungwan, Joohyun hung up. Nervously, she started chewing her fingernails when she suddenly noticed the small, dried bloodstain on the floor in front of the bookshelf.  
  
"So one of the kids was responsible for the blackout after all," Seulgi concluded as the three of them squatted in front of the computer in Joohyun's office, reviewing the footage from the cameras together. Nervously, she chewed on her lower lip. "But how did she get downstairs to the lab? Wasn't the door locked?"  
Seungwan shook her head in embarrassment. "I had left my jacket and handbag upstairs in the office that evening, and in the handbag was my remote control. Your daughter must have found it and accidentally pressed the button. I only realised my remote had disappeared after Joohyun had called me." She avoided looking Joohyun and Seulgi in the eyes. "I'm sorry," Seungwan said meekly.  
"It's too late anyway, we can't turn back time," Seulgi sighed. "Yerim was there during our experiment, she knows about the victim and probably told Sooyoung. Together they then stole our files and are now on the run from us."  
"We must capture the kids again at all costs," Joohyun said firmly. Her expression darkened, while Seulgi and Seungwan nodded in agreement.


	8. Runaways

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Red Velvet x Marvel's Runaways AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tumblr @lil-m0ckingbird

The setting evening sun bathed the city in a harmonious orange, while clouds passed peacefully on the horizon. The oppressive summer heat made the air above the asphalt quiver.  
"Run faster!" shrieked Yerim in panic. "Damn it, Sooyoung, you're way too slow! They are about to catch up. We really suck at being runaways..."  
"I-I don't want to hear any criticism!" the black-haired girl panted breathlessly. "It's not my fault they busted us!" Frantically, her fingers clutched the greasy plastic handlebars of the stolen shopping cart, which she hastily pushed up a steep hill with Yerim inside. "I can't go any further," she rasped. Anxiously, Sooyoung glanced over her shoulder at her mother and Seulgi.  
Seungwan's gaze flared with determination as she unrelentingly chased after her daughter, running up the hill behind them while Seulgi struggled badly to keep up. "Seulgi!" snarled Seungwan as she clearly fell behind them. " Pull yourself together!"  
"I'm surprised Seungwan can run this fast despite her short legs," Yerim commented, watching their pursuers anxiously as a car suddenly came speeding up the road behind them.  
The engine howled dangerously, the sunlight reflected in the jet black paint and tyres squealed agonisedly as they were pressed into the tar and the car stopped in the middle of the road. With a swing, the driver's side door was yanked open. With her lips pressed into a thin line and a pistol in her hands, Joohyun leapt out of the vehicle with an icy expression.  
"Finally," Seulgi wheezed in relief when she spotted her wife. She stopped running and rested her hands on her knees in exhaustion.  
With a stern look, Joohyun braced herself in front of Sooyoung and Yerim, who continued to rush up the hill with the shopping cart in a panic. "Stop right there," she ordered coldly, pointing the gun at the kids. Only when she fired a warning shot into the air did Sooyoung stop, startled. The black-haired girl gulped frightened as Joohyun pointed the gun at her and she raised her hands. "Get out and get in the car," Joohyun ordered her daughter as the cart stopped on the hilltop.  
Yerim nodded obediently, but when Sooyoung reached out to help her get out of the shopping cart, she hurriedly pulled the black-haired girl into the car with her. Without Sooyoung's support, the thin wheels suddenly found no more grip on the slippery asphalt. Affected by gravity, the ramshackle cart rolled back down the hill. With an enraged yell, Joohyun and Seungwan jumped to the side at the right moment as the cart missed them but instead crashed into the car, scraping a long, deep scratch into the black paint.  
"No!" cried Seulgi in horror as the shopping cart scratched the paint of her beloved car. "Please don't!" she wailed, sinking to her knees as the cart gained speed in its downhill run.  
"Look out! The main road!" screamed Joohyun in horror as she straightened up and looked helplessly after her daughter.  
"This is not going to end well," Sooyoung cursed under bated breath. "And this is definitely your fault." She clung desperately to Yerim with one arm and covered her eyes with the other as the younger girl panicked and tried to redirect the cart.  
"Don't blame me," Yerim grumbled, and at the last moment managed to steer the stiff cart into a narrow side street. At breakneck speed, they crashed into a dumpster. The thin metal walls bent under the force of the collision, the frame of the shopping cart groaned and Sooyoung and Yerim were thrown ungently from the cart into the dumpster. "Damn," Yerim muttered, raising to her feet to help Sooyoung up, her face contorted in pain.  
"We have to leave quickly," Sooyoung urged. "Our parents are unlikely to give up so easily and they will continue their hunt for us. We need to extend our lead and get out of the city again." Yerim agreed with her and together they hastily climbed over a chain-link fence into a deserted courtyard before continuing their escape through the maze of the city's confusing, branching, narrow streets. 

Flashback to the previous day:

"I'm sure the school will have already informed Joohyun or Seulgi," Yerim said nervously. Awkwardly, she scratched her elbow and chewed on her lower lip as she kept glancing back paranoidly. "Our parents probably already know about our disappearance and are already searching for us." A sense of fear gnawed at her nonstop and she squirmed uncomfortably under the weight of her backpack as blood rushed in her ears. Startled, Yerim flinched as Sooyoung suddenly grabbed her hand unexpectedly.  
"We can do this," Sooyoung tried to reassure her. She forced herself to smile as her thumb drew fine circles over the back of Yerim's hand. The younger sighed loudly and leaned exhaustedly against her shoulder as they hurriedly trudged through the city.  
"We need to find a place to hide before they find us," Yerim whispered. Closing her eyes, she breathed in Sooyoung's reassuring and by now very familiar scent. "What are we actually going to do once we have handed over the evidences to the police?" she asked in a small voice.  
Sooyoung shook her head. "I have no idea," she confessed, not wanting to worry Yerim any more. "If we want to escape the city, then we would need a vehicle. But we don't have a vehicle or a shelter or enough money and food."  
Like two normal teenagers, they strolled through the city centre. The smell of fried food and candyfloss lingered in the air, colourful shop windows adorned the storefronts and businessmen in snazzy suits impetuously pushed past passers-by in their haste. Sooyoung and Yerim came past a shop selling camping supplies. Right next to the automatic sliding door, an employee was displaying an expensive luxury tent when a spontaneous idea suddenly struck the black-haired girl.  
"Hey!" exclaimed Yerim in surprise as Sooyoung pulled her into the stuffy shop without a warning. "What are you doing?" she asked in surprise. Sooyoung hastily pulled her into the camping equipment and supply section. They ducked behind a shelf of cookware, but apart from them there were only two other customers in the shop, who were standing bored in the hiking boots section and didn't seem to have noticed the two girls.  
"As long as that guy out there is busy setting up his tent, we'll find our own tent in here," Sooyoung explained her improvised plan.  
"But we don't have any money!", Yerim pointed out.  
Sooyoung rolled her eyes in annoyance. "After all, we're not going to buy the tent, we're going to steal it. We'll get out the back door of the shop with the thing while the guy outside is distracted."  
Shocked, Yerim's eyes widened. "S-steal?" she stammered nervously.  
"We have no choice," Sooyoung sighed. "We'd have an easier time with the stolen tent and we could hide. Who would you rather be caught by? The police if they catch us stealing, or our parents who are erratic scientists and murderers?" Before Yerim could contradict again, Sooyoung had grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her into the section with the tents. She snatched one of the cheapest tents from the shelf and stowed it in her backpack while Yerim kept an eye on the employee outside the shop. They then fled through the battered back door, which was not shot and led them into a narrow alley. Before the employee had noticed the theft, Sooyoung and Yerim had escaped from the alley and disappeared again into the chaos of the jostling crowds downtown.  
  
Yerim suppressed a shiver as she pressed her legs closer against her chest and dreamily watched the sunset, while below the high landscape the city sparkled like a jewel in the fading daylight, with its many orange lights. Many small dots of light glittered in the distance. Yerim had wrapped a thin blanket tightly around her shoulders.  
"You should eat something," Sooyoung said in a soft voice and sat down with her on the sandy forest soil. Her gaze also wandered longingly over the twinkling sea of lights; unfortunately, no stars could be seen so close to the city. "There's dry toast and cold ravioli from a can." She held a piece of toast under Yerim's nose.  
Disgusted, the younger girl screwed up her face. "I'd rather eat something warm," she whispered. "Something that Seulgi cooked or, for my sake, something that Joohyun tried to cook. I wouldn't care how bad it tasted." Her expression looked sad and Sooyoung gently hugged her back. "Why did they do this to us?" asked Yerim, barely audible. "To us and all these runaways? Why could we never have been just a normal family?"  
"I don't know the answers to these questions, but it's getting late," Sooyoung sighed wearily. "We should go to sleep. Then tomorrow we'll go to the police with our evidences and convict our parents. then it will finally be over."  
Yerim nodded. She rose from the sandy ground and slipped into the tent. Sooyoung followed her, zipping up and shutting the entrance of the tent behind her before snuggling under a blanket with Yerim. Creepy shadows were cast against the canvas of the tent, while the lights of the city still shone dimly in the distance.  
"Good night," Sooyoung said.  
"What if our parents do catch us?" the younger girl asked suddenly. "What if they are lurking for us? If tonight is our last night on earth," Yerim opined. "Then I wish for one more kiss from you." She looked beggingly into Sooyoung's eyes as she nuzzled against her.  
Sooyoung mused a smile. "If tonight is our last night on earth, then we should make it the most special night of our lives." Tenderly, her thumb ran over Yerim's full lips before she gently closed the short distance between them and kissed her softly. Yerim's lips felt warm and soft, they tasted sweet and seductive and quickly Sooyoung's simple kiss became more eager. Heatedly, she pressed her lips on Yerim's and ran her tongue lightly over her lower lip as she pinned the younger girl against the soft floor of the tent. A deep moan escaped Yerim's lips as Sooyoung let her hands wander under her top and at the same time began kissing down her neck. Sooyoung hastily pulled the top over Yerim's head before they crawled under the covers together. 

Staring rigidly at the tips of her shoes, Yerim fiddled nervously with her fingernails. Her palms sweaty cold, she chewed on her bottom lip and the ticking of the cheap wristwatch of the policeman opposite her made her frantic. Her foot bounced up and down as she tapped it in an uneven rhythm.  
"So you want to report a murder?" the policeman repeated Sooyoung and Yerim's request sceptically.  
Both nodded resolutely while the younger girl clung tightly to Sooyoung's arm. Yerim bit the inside of her cheek in agitation, panicked she tried to take a deep breath. "Yes," she said in a shaky voice. "We are here to report a murder." Tightly she clutched the backpack containing the evidences.  
"Okay," the policeman sighed, looking at their serious faces. Quickly he typed something into his computer. "The colleague in charge is still in an important meeting, but as soon as you can get to him, I'll let you know. Sit down in the chairs at the front of the waiting area and please be patient."  
  
For quite a while Sooyoung and Yerim sat in the chairs waiting. Constantly some telephones rang in the background, impatiently Yerim fidgeted in her seat. "Why is this meeting taking so long?" she hissed irritably, as heavy footsteps suddenly sounded in the corridor of the police station and a small group of people marched past the glass door of the waiting room. Yerim swallowed hard as she recognised her parents and Seungwan. Her heart began to race in her chest and, panic-stricken, she grabbed Sooyoung by her wrist and jumped up. "Come on, let's go! Let's get out of here!" she said, abruptly leading Sooyoung towards the exit.  
"What, wait... Why?" stuttered Sooyoung in confusion, irritated she stumbled after her. "Are you getting cold feet?"  
"Our parents," Yerim whispered, subtly pointing at the group of people who had turned their backs on them while Sooyoung and she took cover behind a bench.  
"What are our parents doing at the police station?" Sceptically, Sooyoung watched as they all shook hands with a policeman in turn. "I hope you can bring them back to us in one piece," the black-haired girl heard Joohyun say. Secretly, Yerim's mother handed the gentleman a sealed envelope.  
"The usual amount?" the older gentleman in the suit asked and Joohyun nodded in promise. "I will have all available task forces looking for your children immediately," the policeman replied with a friendly smile. "They will be found."  
"We must get out of here immediately before they discover us," Yerim stated. "Our parents bribed the police." Sooyoung nodded in agreement. They slipped out of their cover and ran towards the exit when Seungwan suddenly turned around and caught sight of their escape.  
"Sooyoung?!" the blonde called out in surprise as she recognised her missing daughter.  
"Run!" ordered Sooyoung Yerim, shoving her out the door as they stormed out of the police station and fled across the street to the supermarket to hide while Seulgi and Seungwan began chasing after their kids.  
  
Back in the present:  
  
"We outran them," Yerim cheered breathlessly. Exhausted, she climbed the last steps of a fire ladder up to the roof of a house. "We barely escaped our parents," she sighed, settling down on the rough stones.  
Sooyoung also finished her ascent to the roof and sat down with her. "Up here we should be safe from Joohyun, Seulgi and Seungwan for now. But did you see the gun your mother had?"  
Yerim nodded. "She was pointing it at us, so the thing was hard to miss." Exasperated, she massaged her temples. "We need to protect ourselves better," the younger girl decided. "We didn't stand a chance of defending ourselves against them today."  
Sooyoung rested her head on her girlfriend's shoulder. "We should sleep on the roof this night. The entire police force is looking for us and there are photos of us all over the screens in the city with headlines dubbing us as dangerous runaways. We would never make it to the outskirts of the city unseen." Sighing, she intertwined her fingers with Yerim's and drew small circles on the back of her hand at the same time.  
"Our parents are desperate to catch us, but they won't be able to if we go undercover first," Yerim said with optimism. "Together we'll manage to convict them," she promised the black-haired girl. "Even if practically the entire city is hunting for us." With a slight smile, Yerim gave Sooyoung a kiss on the lips.


	9. Utopia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Red Velvet x Marvel's Runaways AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tumblr @lil-m0ckingbird

Gloomily, the low-hanging lamp illuminated the luxurious dining room, while the wood of the tabletop groaned under the quantity and weight of the many cables, additional connections and computer screens. Seulgi, with Seungwan's help, had dragged almost all the useful technical equipment from the secret basement upstairs and had set it up on the table in the dining room. Extension cords stretched like tripwires throughout the room while Joohyun sat tired-eyed in front of three screens, watching the various footage from the entire camera system of the city simultaneously, hoping to find out the possible whereabouts of her daughter. She blinked wearily but resolutely continued to stare at the footage with a blurry gaze, massaging her throbbing temples in exhaustion. Joohyun yawned as she tensely clutched the computer mouse. Her forehead was wrinkled in concern, her body tensed achingly as if she was electrified. Fuming, her gaze burned into the screen. "I can't believe we lost track of the kids," Joohyun hissed irritably, gritting her teeth in annoyance as she sped forward through the video footage. Her knuckles shimmered white as Seulgi carefully took the mouse from her hand, stopping her from accidentally destroying it in her anger.  
"Maybe you should take a little break," Seulgi whispered. "It's very late and you seem very drained." Gently, she gave Joohyun a kiss on her tousled hair and began massaging her tense shoulders. Her wife sighed in defeat.  
Joohyun propped her head up on her palms and leaned wearily into Seulgi's tender touch, but she couldn't take her eyes off the screens. "I have to find her," Joohyun whispered under bated breath.  
"Don't worry so much," Seulgi tried to reassure her. Lovingly, she rubbed Joohyun's back. "We will definitely find the kids in the next few days. Practically the whole city is looking for them and Yerim and Sooyoung certainly haven't gone very far. The police have already blocked off the entire outskirts of the city."  
Suddenly Joohyun began to cry. She was completely at her wits' end as thick tears ran down her cheeks and dripped onto her top as she crumpled in front of Seulgi. "I'm sorry," she sobbed as Seulgi pulled her wife into her arms for consolation and Joohyun buried her face in her shoulder. "I just want my Yerim back," she cried desperately. Joohyun felt so incredibly miserable and powerless as she clung anxiously to Seulgi. "What if something happens to her out there? I don't want anything to happen to her."  
"We'll find our daughter," Seulgi promised her, continuing to stroke her back reassuringly. "I miss her just as much as you."  
Heavy sobs made Joohyun's fragile-looking figure tremble. "I also want to make it all up to her when she's back home. She deserves the truth, no more secrets," she stuttered as Seulgi handed her a tissue.  
"Tomorrow I'll take care of upgrading our technology," Seungwan said suddenly, appearing in the doorway with food in her hands. "With the help of the drones, we will find them for sure," she promised firmly. "They will not escape us again, and by all means we will bring them back home." 

With a sigh, Sooyoung suppressed a shudder as a blast of chilly wind swept over the lonely rooftops and tugged at her clothes. She shivered and wrapped her thin jacket tighter around her shoulders. Her body trembled in the cold of the early morning, she yawned tiredly and blinked strained to banish the remaining sleep from her eyes. Sooyoung sat on the icy stone edge of the roof, dangling her legs over the precipice as the wind carried the first noise of the distant highway up to her. The narrow streets of the city centre looked deserted, most people still asleep. The few people who hurried by below Sooyoung in their usual bustle were too busy with their own thoughts and concerns to look up. Tensely, Sooyoung's fingers clawed at the rough stone as she waited nervously for Yerim's return. Before dawn, the younger girl had left their hideout to accomplish some important errands. But the longer Yerim delayed her return, the stronger the fear and worry grew in Sooyoung that her girlfriend might have been caught.  
"Yerim should have been back at least half an hour ago..." muttered Sooyoung under bated breath. Worriedly, she kept an eye out for police patrol cars and checked the elapsed time on her wristwatch again as Yerim's blonde figure finally struggled up the ladder to the roof. Sooyoung rushed towards her, hastily pulling her girlfriend into a hug and holding her tightly. Her fear vanished into thin air when Yerim placed a quick smooch on her lips as a greeting and gave her a small smile.  
Gently, Yerims detached herself from Sooyoung's arms and presented her her backpack. "I got something for our protection..." she whispered, carefully pulling the gun from a secret compartment in the inner lining. "This is only for an absolute emergency," Yerim explained, her brows furrowed in deep worry. "With this, we should stand a chance against our parents."  
Sooyoung nodded slightly, chewing nervously on her lower lip. They were both uncomfortable with the weapon in their hands, but probably the thing could save their lives against their parents.  
"I also brought breakfast for both of us," Yerim beamed with a grin, trying to ease the mood again. She handed Sooyoung a bag of food and the newspaper. "We're so popular that we' re on the front page," she joked as she sat down next to Sooyoung on the cold stones, pulling a croissant out of the bag and pointing at the two huge black and white photos printed on it. "I'm sure this is Joohyun's work," Yerim said with her mouth full. "Our parents have bribed the police and have them under their control. We must now come up with a new plan to convict our parents."  
Sooyoung agreed with a nod as she wordlessly flipped through the newspaper. "Vigilante justice," she suddenly suggested. Questioningly, Yerim looked at her girlfriend. "We could sneak into your school, break into the computer room and upload all our evidences of our parents' crimes on the internet through the school servers. We can't trust the police right now, but this way our parents would still be convicted."  
Enthusiastically, Yerim nodded. "We probably don't have another choice, but the idea is brilliant." She gave Sooyoung a euphoric grin. "The easiest time to implement the plan is in the morning, during the daily school assembly before lunch. The assembly lasts about half an hour, which should be enough time to convict our parents."

Dust danced in the stuffy air in the warm rays of sunlight that fell through the ceiling-high windows of the classrooms. Crouching, Sooyoung and Yerim sneaked past abandoned classrooms and the infirmary through the empty corridors.  
"Your school has really super modern facilities," Sooyoung claimed sarcastically, playing impressed as they reached unseen the computer room and her girlfriend quickly picked the old-fashioned lock on the door with a pocket knife.  
"The school server will be enough for the upload. Just going to an internet café would be too risky." Yerim opened the door briskly, revealing a pile of nicely lined up dusty screens in a row. "Tada!" She took Sooyoung's hand, led her into the room and together they sat down at the nearest computer. "We have about half an hour," Yerim said, glancing at the clock on the wall. Sooyoung hurriedly handed her the flash drive with the evidences while Yerim booted up the computer and got to work.  
Neither had noticed the unobtrusive figure of the school nurse behind them, who had watched them closely as they broke into the school and the computer room and was now reaching for her telephone. She glanced incidentally at the cut-out photos from the missing persons report hanging on the wall in the nurse's office. "Hello, am I speaking to the police?" the school nurse asked quietly into the receiver. Out of the corner of her eyes, she cautiously observed if the runaways were still busy in the computer room. "I want to report that I have found the two missing kids. They have shown up at their school."  
  
Carefully Seulgi's fingers combed through Joohyun's tangled long hair, she tenderly stroked a few of the many black strands behind her ear and her lips were graced with a satisfied smile as her wife had rested her head on her lap and finally fallen asleep on the sofa in the living room after a long and tiring night. Seulgi gave Joohyun a gentle kiss on the forehead when suddenly her mobile phone rang.  
Cautiously, she got up, quietly slid off the sofa and covered Joohyun with a sweater before taking her mobile phone and going outside to the garden so as not to accidentally wake her wife.  
"Did you find her?" asked Seulgi directly after she had answered the call. Concerned, she controlled by the way with a glance through the window whether Joohyun was still sleeping and listened attentively to the policeman on the other end of the line. "I'm heading to the school immediately," Seulgi confirmed firmly. "Have all your forces block off the area until we get there. We can't lose them again."  
Hastily, she hung up and ran back into the house and down to the secret basement to quickly tell Seungwan. "We'd better let Joohyun continue sleeping," Seulgi decided and hurriedly packed up her needed equipment before leaving for the school with Seungwan.

"Just a tiny bit more," Yerim cursed lowly as she and Sooyoung anxiously kept an eye on the green bar and the percentage display of the evidences upload, which was almost complete.  
"Come on... We're almost done," Sooyoung muttered under bated breath. Her fingernails clawed into the tabletop and inwardly she prayed to God.  
Suddenly, a slight clicking sounded in the background. "Seungwan, turn off the internet and all electricity. I found them, they're in the computer room."  
Startled, Sooyoung and Yerim flinched, their heads snapping towards the door. Seulgi was suddenly standing behind them in the room, blocking the only exit. In one hand Seulgi held a walkie-talkie and in the other a pistol, which she now pointed at the two kids, while at the same time the upload stopped and the computer reported an error.  
"We're trapped here!" remarked Sooyoung in panic. Police cars drove into the schoolyard with howling and flickering blue sirens. Police officers jumped out of their vehicles and locked down the area while the building was evacuated.  
Hectically, Yerim took the flash drive and stuffed it into her trousers pocket. "We have to try to escape," she exclaimed, blindly searching for her backpack. "We could climb onto the roof through a window!"  
"You can't run away," Seulgi sighed with pity. "I'm really sorry, but we're glad we finally found you," she whispered regretfully, pointing the pistol at Sooyoung.  
"No!" cried Yerim in horror as Seulgi pulled the trigger and shot Sooyoung. Her girlfriend slumped to the ground before her eyes, numb. Panicked, she looked for the gun in her backpack to fight Seulgi, but Seulgi already pulled the trigger a second time and she was hit by the stun gun. "No..." whispered Yerim. Tears gathered in her eyes.  
"I'm terribly sorry, Yerimie," Seulgi said softly, gently catching her daughter before she could hit her head on the ground.  
"I hate you," Yerim hissed. Dark spots danced before her eyes, she had great difficulty staying conscious and finally collapsed in Seulgi's arms.


	10. Call The Devil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Red Velvet x Marvel's Runaways AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tumblr @lil-m0ckingbird

Carefully, Yerim opened her eyes. She blinked hard and turned her heavy head to the other side of the soft pillow with a groan as the glare of the blazing hot midday sun blinded her through the huge window beside her bed. Her mouth was dry as dust, her head throbbed and blood rushed heavily in her ears. Yerim felt sweaty and dizzy, strands of damp hair stuck to her face and her whole body itched uncomfortably under the thick down duvet.  
"Where am I?" croaked Yerim hoarsely. Her eyes darted confusedly around the narrow white room, along the bare tiles. The acrid smell of disinfectant crept into her nose as she flung the blanket aside and tried to sit up. A transparent, thin plastic tube extended from her arm. She looked sceptically at the IV and the accompanying infusion bag with saline solution hanging above her head. Slowly, Yerim realised that she was alone in a room in a hospital bed.  
"Why am I in the hospital?" she whispered under bated breath. Cautiously, her fingertips ran over the thick bandage that protectively padded her head. She couldn't remember being injured. What had happened?  
Suddenly Yerim remembered that she had been out together with Sooyoung. Snatches of memory blended with her thoughts. Sooyoung and she had sneaked through the corridors of her school together during class and had broken into the computer room, but why had they broken into the computer room? Yerim got a computer at home and Sooyoung owned a laptop. It felt like Yerim had forgotten something important. Complete memories suddenly seemed to be missing. Suspiciously, she frowned.  
"Where is Sooyoung?" she thought aloud. At first, the thought of Sooyoung made Yerim feel an exciting inner warmth, but then the black-haired girl's absence suddenly gave her a deep stab in the heart and she felt sad. "Maybe she's just in another room..." Slowly she freed herself from the plastic tube, then Yerim held onto the metal railing of her hospital bed and slid off the mattress. She suppressed a shiver as she hastily crept out of the room, barefoot and in her pyjamas, across the cold tiles and stumbled down the corridor to look for Sooyoung.  
"Where are you going?" someone asked kindly and Yerim jumped in surprise as a nurse suddenly blocked her path.  
"To see Sooyoung," Yerim answered the nurse hurriedly, trying to squeeze past her quickly.  
"I don't know a Sooyoung." The nurse shook her head doubtfully and put her hands sternly on her hips. "Young lady, you have a serious head injury and are not supposed to leave your bed. You will now obediently go back to your room."  
Enraged, Yerim gritted her teeth, desperately trying to fight her way past the nurse. "I have to get to Sooyoung!" she cried in panic as tears gathered in her eyes.  
"There is no Sooyoung here. You're just confused and need to calm down," the nurse repeated. She grabbed the girl painfully by her wrist and pulled her harshly back to her room while Yerim tried to fight her off. "Do you want me to call the security for you and they will take you back to your room?"  
"I need to find Sooyoung!" Tears obscured Yerim's vision, but she managed to free herself from the nurse's tight grip and hurriedly ran in the other direction of the corridor towards the door, when suddenly black dots began to dance at the edge of her field of vision. Hectically, her world began to spin and Yerim did not feel well, her limbs suddenly feeling tremendously heavy and numb. Blood rushed in her ears, suffocating all surrounding sounds, she lost her balance. Before the nurse could react, Yerim collapsed on the hard tiles. Her head hit the wall and at the same moment Yerim recognised the blurred figures of her parents rushing worriedly down the corridor.  
"Yerimie!" cried Joohyun anxiously, kneeling down beside her daughter. "What are you doing out of your bed?"  
Startled, Yerim flinched as Joohyun touched her and gently stroked through her hair. Abruptly, a crushing panic overcame her, the urge to run seized her and internally her heart began to race. It thundered against her ribcage, her body trembled and the sudden panic threatened to suffocate her. Her breathing went in frantic, stilted gasps. Eyes wide, Yerim stared at Joohyun.  
"We have to sedate her before she starts hyperventilating or hurts herself!" exclaimed Seulgi as Yerim struggled anxiously in her and Joohyun's arms, continuing to try to free herself.  
"Sooyoung!" Yerim wanted to shout louder when she suddenly felt a small, lonely sting in her arm. Her parents' voices drifted muffled away, their faces blurred and Yerim felt like she was being pulled underwater by an invisible force. The mass of water smothered all sound, blanking out her world, a pleasant peaceful warmth enveloped her and Yerim slowly sank further down into the inviting black void, all the way to the bottom, before passing out in Joohyun and Seulgi's arms.   
  
"Umma? Mum?", Yerim coughed hoarsely as she woke up again and noticed Joohyun and Seulgi at the sides of her hospital bed. It was already dark outside, late in the evening, and Joohyun clung to her hand.  
Her mother had tears in her eyes, but she forced herself to smile encouragingly. Lovingly, she combed through Yerim's sweaty hair. "What kind of things do you always do, my darling?" Carefully, Joohyun pulled her into a hug, squeezing her protectively and rocking her gently in her arms. "You have caused me and your mother such terrible worry," she confessed, placing a light kiss on Yerim's hair.  
"What happened? How did I get this head injury?", Yerim wanted to know in confusion, the questions burning on her tongue. Her fingers clutching Joohyun's top, she buried her face in her mother's shoulder and breathed in her comforting, familiar scent. "Where is Sooyoung?"  
But Joohyun and Seulgi remained silent, ignoring their daughter's questions, exchanging an obvious look of concern in front of her.  
"Where is Sooyoung?" repeated Yerim her question, breaking away from her mother. "What happened?"  
Seulgi cleared her throat awkwardly. "How about we check how your head is?"  
Yerim flinched, terrified, as Seulgi suddenly rose to her feet and carefully loosened the thick bandage around her head to take a checking look at her injury. A whimper escaped Yerim's lips as Seulgi touched her. Abruptly, the same crushing panic came over her again, the urge to run seized her all over again and suddenly her heart thundered anxiously against her chest once more. She felt Joohyun stroking her cheek lovingly. Yerim leaned further into her mother's tender touch and eyed her with a watery gaze. "I don't remember anything," she confessed in a shaky voice. "I'm scared."  
"You don't have to be scared," Seulgi assured her, finishing her quick examination. "You are safe now."  
"What am I safe from now?" asked Yerim. "What happened and where is Sooyoung?" She looked at her mother beggingly.  
Joohyun sighed heavily, gently stroking the back of Yerim's hand. "You and Sooyoung had a serious accident with a stolen car," she explained slowly to her daughter.  
Horrified, Yerim stared at her mothers, tears gathering in her eyes. "Is Sooyoung dead?" she asked in panic, suppressing a heavy sob. "Is that why you didn't want to answer me? Did Sooyoung not survive the car accident?!" She stumbled over her own words, choking on her own spit and starting to cough.  
"Yerimie, please calm down," Seulgi pleaded. "Sooyoung managed to survive the accident completely unscathed. You two were truly unbelievably lucky. Sooyoung is fine and you only suffered a minor head injury and mild amnesia, probably caused by trauma."  
Sighing, Yerim leaned back into her pillows, Sooyoung was fine. "Where is she now?" she wanted to know from her parents.  
Joohyun and Seulgi exchanged another worried look. " Darling," Joohyun murmured, gently stroking Yerim's arm. "The accident was caused by Sooyoung losing control over herself. You must know that Seungwan's daughter suffers from dangerous schizophrenia. She takes strong medication, but on the day of the accident she still went crazy and dragged you into her madness. She stole a car, and the two of you drove around in it and suddenly ran into oncoming traffic on the highway. Sooyoung deliberately drove the car into the oncoming traffic and tried to kill you both. It was incredibly lucky that you both survived and you are safe now. Seungwan took her daughter away."  
Sceptically, Yerim frowned. "Do we have a secret basement?" she asked suddenly to her parents.  
Joohyun and Seulgi flinched in surprise. They hesitated for a moment with their answer, but then shook their heads in agreement. "You have a really vivid imagination, sweetie," Seulgi smiled, stroking Yerim's hair tenderly.  
Yerim could have sworn she had remembered a secret basement....  
  
With her eyes closed, Yerim dozed in her hospital bed the next day in the warm afternoon sun. Joohyun and Seulgi had not left their daughter's side the whole time. Joohyun had rested her head on her mattress, still holding her hand, and had fallen asleep, while Seulgi sat at the end of Yerim's bed, absorbed in a book.  
Suddenly there was a knock at the door. Seulgi looked up from her book in surprise as the next moment Seungwan entered the room. She had a cheerful smile on her face and was carrying a small basket. Yerim's mothers hugged her in greeting before Seungwan placed the basket on her bed. "I baked you some biscuits to cheer you up. Also, I am here to apologise on behalf of my daughter for her actions. I'm incredibly sorry that Sooyoung caused so much damage."  
"It's all right," Yerim murmured, musing a pained smile.   
"Ouch!" cried Seulgi indignantly when Seungwan slapped her hand away as she tried to steal one of the biscuits from the basket.  
Joohyun shook her head in aghast as Seulgi rubbed the red mark on the back of her hand with sad puppy dog eyes like a wounded animal. " Will you be alright on your own for a while?", Joohyun asked her daughter. "Me and your mother need to discuss something with Seungwan outside."  
Yerim nodded wordlessly and watched them silently as all three left the room, closing the door behind them. She sighed and rose from her bed to go to the bathroom. The bathroom was built right into the room. Behind two thin wooden walls, there was a puny, tiled room with a toilet, a sink, a mirror and even a shower.  
Suspiciously, Yerim looked at her face and the bandage around her head in the mirror as she washed her hands. She was still not sure whether to believe her parents and Seungwan's story about a schizophrenic Sooyoung and the car accident. Some elusive feeling made her doubt the alleged truth. Did the head injury already make her doubt her own sanity?  
Something was not right. If she had a head injury so severe that she was not even allowed to get out of her bed, why was she not in pain at all? Yerim had not taken any painkillers. Experimentally, she pulled at a loose tip of the bandage and unwrapped it. Startled, Yerim gasped; there was no wound at all in her reflection!  
"They all lied to me," Yerim whispered. It hit her like an ice-cold slap in the face when suddenly all her memories came back too. Yerim knew exactly again why they had broken into the computer room and that she wanted to convict her parents with Sooyoung. "I have to find her and then we'll get the evidences back and convict our parents," she said determinedly and secretly disposed the bandage in the rubbish bin before escaping from the bathroom and hastily putting on her normal clothes. She had no time to put on shoes over her white socks. Yerim was about to flee her stuffy hospital room when she heard the muffled voices of her parents and Seungwan from the other side of the door. They had finished their conversation and would be back in the room at any second.  
Hectically, Yerim looked around. She couldn't just hide under the bed or in the bathroom, so she rushed towards the tilted window in a panic. She opened it wide and hastily climbed onto the window sill to escape from the room. At a dizzying height, there was a small balcony directly below her, which led to a waiting room one floor below.  
"Fuck...," Yerim breathed as she carefully crouched down backwards, blindly feeling for the railing with her right foot. Feeling the cold metal, she first secured her footing and then let her left foot follow. Her fingers clawed into the cold stone of the window ledge as Yerim glanced down. Swallowing hard, she boldly released her sweaty fingers from the ledge and fell knee-first directly onto the hard cement of the balcony. Gasping, Yerim struggled up, she patted the dust off her pants and took a moment to breathe before quietly opening the balcony door from the outside and slipping into the deserted waiting room.  
Cautiously, Yerim fled the waiting room. With her eyes focused on the floor and her hands in her jacket pockets to avoid attracting attention, she scurried across the ward to the end of the long main corridor. Above her, the green sign of the emergency exit flickered frantically. She pushed open the squeaky door of the stairwell and followed the tiled steps to the ground floor. Through an open emergency exit, Yerim entered the backyard of the hospital, the parking garage towering above her in the early evening sky, which glowed in a dreamy orange due to the approaching dusk. She quickened her steps and finally started running to disappear before Joohyun, Seulgi and Seungwan would notice her disappearance.   
Behind her, the sirens of approaching ambulances could still be heard in the distance as Yerim strolled absent-mindedly down the streets, her hands buried in her pant pockets. She kept casting a paranoid glance over her shoulder. In front of her, the skyscrapers, appearing grey in the twilight, rose like demons into the fiery evening sky.  
"I have to get to the bus stop," Yerim muttered resolutely.

Completely lost in her thoughts, Yerim leaned against the bus stop sign. She was the only one waiting for the bus and had enough time to think. How could she possibly begin the search for Sooyoung?  
"Maybe I could seek help from one of the police stations that are outside the city...", Yerim pondered aloud, chewing on her lower lip as a vehicle suddenly approached. "Finally the bus is coming...", Yerim complained as she however recognised the vehicle that was now pulling up in front of the bus stop. "Joohyun and Seulgi...", Yerim cursed under bated breath. She was about to turn and run away when the passenger side door flew open and Joohyun jumped out of the car with an angry expression on her face.  
"You will now dutifully get into the car, young lady," Joohyun ordered her sternly. She gritted her teeth irritably. "I will not repeat my words."  
Yerim swallowed hard as her mother came towards her with quick steps. Her legs felt like jelly, they no longer wanted to obey her and Yerim stood rooted to the spot in front of the bus stop. Her heart was beating anxiously up to her throat when Joohyun simply grabbed her by the arm and dragged her to the car. Yerim dutifully obeyed her command and sat in the back seat. Seulgi eyed her frozen figure briefly in the rearview mirror before activating the car's central locking system and driving her daughter home again.  
How had her parents found Yerim so quickly?


	11. Too Young To Grow Old

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Red Velvet x Marvel's Runaways AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tumblr @lil-m0ckingbird

Both outside and inside, pitch darkness reigned. Blindly, Yerim crept through the long, gloomy hallway, only the pale light of a few lonely street lamps shining into the gloomy house and the dull ticking of a clock accompanying them. Paranoid, Yerim cast an anxious glance at the still deserted driveway in front of the house before stopping in the peaceful darkness in front of the closed door of Seungwan's office and reaching out a trembling hand for the handle. The cold metal burned as she pushed down the handle and held her breath to slip through a narrow, open crack into the icy room. The stifling wind howled in through a tilted window.  
Smoothly, Yerim let the door slide into the lock behind her and carefully looked around the unfamiliar office. The walls were lined with ceiling-high shelves, which were crammed to the last free centimetre with books and folders. In some compartments, the books were even stacked in double rows and some empty spaces were filled by a few ugly plastic plants. Next to the door was a small drawer on which were neatly lined up many frames with various photos of Seungwan and Sooyoung. The polished laminate shone in the dull light of the street lamps, which fell through the imposing window front. A gigantic desk made of solid oak stood in front of the window front and on the tabletop was an expensive computer. A hopeful smile flitted across Yerim's face as she sat down at the desk and started Seungwan's computer. She hoped that she had a chance to find information on Sooyoung's whereabouts in Seungwan's office before her parents would notice her disappearance and the intrusion into the neighbour's house.  
While the computer powered up, Yerim searched through the few desk drawers that were not locked or secured in the scant moonlight. But most of the documents were worthless and contained no information about Sooyoung, and for the remaining drawers she needed a key or the right tools, but then her entry would have left conspicuous traces.  
Frustrated, Yerim sighed. She rubbed her temples in annoyance and squirmed impatiently on Seungwan's chair at the desk as she failed again to hack into the computer. "Damn...", Yerim cursed softly before unsuccessfully shutting down the machine again.  
For a while, she searched the shelves for useful information until she decided to leave Seungwan's study again, looking disappointed. "I'm not getting anywhere here either," she muttered hopelessly. Yerim looked over her shoulder, but the room seemed pristine. She was about to leave it again when her attention suddenly fell on a framed photo on the drawer in the pale moonlight. It showed a still very young Seulgi and Seungwan with Sooyoung and Yerim on their laps respectively. Seulgi and Seungwan were beaming happily into the camera as they sat together with their children in a puny sandbox on a playground. Joohyun must have taken the photo, but Yerim had been too young then to remember that day or Sooyoung.  
A mournful smile formed on Yerim's lips and her heart suddenly felt empty and yet so incredibly heavy. Ever since she could remember, Joohyun and Seulgi had always been with her on that playground.  
Yerim stared longingly at the old photo. Almost every weekend she had taken a walk to this playground with her parents. Seulgi had held Joohyun's hand and had carried her daughter on her shoulders the whole way. While Joohyun had mostly sat on a bench at the edge and watched them with a satisfied smile, Seulgi had run with Yerim across the large adjacent grassland. Sometimes they had picked daisies for Joohyun, but mostly she had played hide-and-seek or tag with Seulgi and, in the summers, football on an improvised field and with two goals made of sticks. When Yerim hadn't dared, Seulgi had joined her on the high climbing frames and slid down the long slide with her. In the sandbox they had built castles, cities and other fantasy worlds. There was even a small carousel on the playground and Seulgi had always had to give her so much boost until Yerim felt queasy and dizzy from spinning so fast and fell face-first into the sand.  
In the evening Joohyun had always sent Yerim to the bathtub. The daisies stood in a small glass of water at Joohyun's bedside table while Yerim had sat in her pyjamas on the soft mattress in her parents' bed and Joohyun had gently combed her daughter's matted hair. She had then tucked her in and given her a kiss before Seulgi had read her a story. Mostly, Yerim had then fallen asleep in her parents' arms.  
With glistening tears, Yerim carefully put the photo back. She swallowed hard. "Sometimes I wish I could be a little kid again and have my parents back," she whispered. Her voice trembling, she tightly hugged her arms around her own waist and suppressed a weak sob. She missed the warm feeling of comfort. She secretly wished she had never had to let that feeling go and that she had not only been left with memories.  
Suddenly the light switch clicked, Yerim whirled around startled and caught sight of her parents standing next to Seungwan in the doorway of the office with their arms folded in front of their chests and very stern looks.  
Joohyun sighed in annoyance, pinching the bridge of her nose and eyeing her daughter, shaking her head. "Aren't you going to apologise to Seungwan?" she asked irritably. "Your breaking into her house and office has clearly gone too far now."  
"Where is Sooyoung?", Yerim pressed out stifled. Her body tensed, she clenched her fists and glared darkly at Joohyun. "I want to know where my girlfriend is and-"  
"It is enough!", Joohyun interrupted her harshly, "It is finally enough!" She gritted her teeth angrily as Yerim flinched fearfully. "Your constant running away has come to an end now. You are pushing boundaries all the time and it is enough for me and your mother."  
"She is not my mother and neither are you!" spat Yerim. Her voice wavered unsteadily, thin tears obscuring her vision. "You are no longer my parents and I wish you never had been. You are cruel monsters and murderers!" Stunned, with open mouths and the same hurt expression on their faces, Joohyun and Seulgi stared at Yerim as their daughter ruthlessly fought her way past them and hastily fled Seungwan's house with quick steps. "I'm going to bed!" she shouted, slamming the front door back into the lock.  
"She already knows the truth, but she won't forgive us until she knows all the answers and explanations," Seulgi muttered wistfully. "We should finally give them to her." Joohyun agreed with a slight nod. 

Cautiously, Joohyun knocked on her daughter's room door. "Yerimie?" she asked uncertainly when no one responded to her knock. "Could you please unlock your door? Me and your mother-" Joohyun sighed dolefully before correcting herself. "Me and Seulgi, we are coming in peace and we just want to talk to you. Please unlock the door, Yerimie." She leaned her head against the wood of the door frame in exasperation when there was no response from her daughter.  
Seulgi knocked again. "Why do you ignore us and say such hurtful words?" She took her wife in her arms affectionately.  
Yerim scoffed contemptuously. "Quick counter-question," she replied coldly, with a dismissive undertone. "Why do you kill people?"  
Joohyun and Seulgi sighed. "We just want to help people, sweetheart," Joohyun tried in vain to explain. "Our work is supposed to bring a lot of well-being for people in the future."  
"And for that you are willing to go over corpses?" Suddenly the key clicked in the lock and Yerim opened her door just a crack. She eyed Joohyun and Seulgi sadly. "You used to be my heroes, my role models, my parents," she confessed. "But now everything is different and it feels like I have lost everything, my family, my safe home and its protective shelter and my trust in you. I am no longer a naive child, but I wish I had never found out your cruel secret and we could still be a family. In the hospital, everything was normal again for a moment. I just wish I had never remembered the truth and just been happy with your lies."  
"We- we are sorry!" apologised Seulgi. "We are sorry that we have been so absorbed in our work all these years and neglected you. You are our daughter and we love you, I promise, because we would do anything for you and our only intention was simply to help people. It was not our purpose that anyone would die in the process or that you would get caught between our experiments."  
"Yet I had to watch a helpless boy die." With a pejorative look, Yerim folded her arms in front of her chest. "You killed him," she accused Joohyun and Seulgi.  
"He would have died even without our experiments," Joohyun explained tensely. "The boy was seriously ill, he was living on the streets and had no money to afford the expensive medical treatment, but we wanted to help him. Our project was the only way to save him, but it's still in development and it will probably take years before we can really help people with it." She eyed her daughter sadly. "Do you understand our intentions?" she asked pleadingly.  
Yerim nodded mutely, her expression softening and her gaze reflecting regret. "Did you plant a tracker in me to find me as soon as I would have run away again?" she bluntly wanted to know from her parents.  
Seulgi nodded weakly. "We didn't want to lose you again," she confessed. "Yerimie, you are the most precious thing we could ever create. We are incredibly lucky to have you as our daughter and our family is not complete without you. We love you." Seulgi had tears in her eyes, but when she went to give her daughter a kiss, Yerim quickly backed away and closed the door before her face.  
"Honestly, I believe you," she said, "but I want to sleep over your words for a night first. I'm tired and exhausted and I don't know how I'm going to deal with this right now."  
"All right," Seulgi murmured, slightly disappointed. "You can always talk to us," she promised, "Good night, sweetie."  
"We love you, Yerimie," Joohyun said before leaving their daughter alone.  
Sighing, Yerim struggled out of her clothes, put on her pyjamas and turned out the light before crawling under her duvet and rubbing her eyes in exhaustion. With a blank expression, she stared thoughtfully at the ceiling. It took a while before she fell asleep and sank into a magical dreamland.  
When Yerim opened her eyes in her dream, she was suddenly a toddler again. She sat cross-legged on the bare parquet flooring in the living room and for a moment eyed her tiny form curiously in the reflecting glass of the sliding door to the garden. Outside, gloomy clouds piled up in the sky, rain drummed against the windows and ran in wet weals down the glass, while Yerim sucked on her thumb, lost in thought. She remembered this day vaguely. Today was a special day, but why?  
Suddenly Seulgi came rushing into the living room with her arms full of blankets and pillows. She could barely see and collapsed on the couch, groaning. "I think I've dragged all the bedding in the house into the living room now!" she announced, brushing her dishevelled hair. Yerim's face lit up with joy as she recognised her mum and held her arms out begging for her. Seulgi took her in her arms and carried her gently to the huge couch, while Yerim snuggled lovingly against her. "Are you ready to join me in building the biggest castle of pillows and sheets that has ever existed in this living room?"  
Yerim nodded hastily as Joohyun entered the room with a wrapped present in her arms.  
"Happy birthday, Yerimie," she smiled and placed a kiss on her young daughter's forehead, while Yerim grinned happily and held out her arms impatiently for her gift. "I'm sorry your little friends couldn't come today," Joohyun sighed. She stroked her daughter's hair tenderly.  
Yerim remembered the gift, it had been a Lego set for a giant harbour. It had taken her over a week to assemble even with Joohyun and Seulgi's help. Yerim also remembered her supposed friends, no one had wanted to come to her birthday, so she had lied to her parents and told them they all didn't have time. Nevertheless, that day was one of the best birthdays in her memory. First her parents had built a giant castle with her in the living room using all the pillows and blankets in the house and nestled inside with her to eat cake, then they played knight and princess and in the evening Joohyun and Seulgi patiently helped her start building her new Lego set before they all watched a movie together and slept in the castle made of sheets.  
Yerim was happy because her parents were there for her. She remembered how they gave her kisses and told her how much they loved their daughter and how proud they were of her because Yerim would always remain the most precious thing in their lives.

With tears in her eyes, Yerim slipped out of bed the next morning and crept barefoot into the kitchen. The table was already set with fresh fruits, orange juice and croissants, and there was a tempting smell of homemade pancakes and scrambled eggs. Seungwan was sitting next to Seulgi at the table with a cup of coffee and gave her a friendly smile when Yerim came into the kitchen.  
"Why is Seungwan here?" asked Yerim addressing Seulgi, ignoring the presence of their neighbour.  
"I invited her for breakfast," Seulgi explained, sipping her coffee. "Would you like to join us for breakfast too, sweetie? We still have room at the table." She looked at her daughter hopefully.  
Yerim nodded and fished a clean plate out of the cupboard before walking straight up to Joohyun, who was standing by the cooker in a red apron, pulling her into a crushing hug to everyone's surprise. She hugged her mother close and buried her face in her shoulder to hide her tears. "I'm sorry Umma, I don't know if I can ever forgive you and Mum," she sobbed softly into the fabric of Joohyun's top as her mother pulled her further protectively into her arms and stroked her back gently. "But I just want my parents back. I never wanted to give up my light little heart and wish I could just forget everything."  
Carefully, Joohyun gave Yerim a tender kiss on the forehead before she broke away from the embrace and eyed her daughter seriously. "There would be a way to forget everything," she said and began to chew nervously on her lower lip.  
Seungwan cleared her throat. She put down her coffee and rose, scratching the back of her head sheepishly. "I worked with your mother to develop something to make someone forget," she explained. "After we found you kids and brought you back, we gave you a small amount of the serum, but the first use at the hospital didn't last long on you. However, I have since modified the serum and maybe it will work this time," Seungwan suggested.  
Without much hesitation, Yerim agreed firmly, but Seulgi frowned worriedly. "If you take the serum," she began uncertainly. "Then you will forget almost all the events of the last few weeks. You will also forget Sooyoung and your relationship forever."  
"I know," Yerim sighed. "I love Sooyoung, but I don't even know where she is and I can't have both. So I'm choosing to take the serum to be a family with you again and come back home so everything can be like it was before..."  
"All right," Joohyun nodded. "It has been your decision and you have made your choice. After breakfast we will administer the serum to you."


	12. Our Last Day On Earth?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Red Velvet x Marvel's Runaways AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tumblr @lil-m0ckingbird

Joohyun took one last, examining look at her daughter before gently closing the door of her hospital room behind Seulgi and Seungwan. Her forehead furrowed in deep worry lines and her expression serious, she turned to Seungwan with her arms folded in front of her chest and eyed her sternly.  
Seungwan's friendly smile had died, she suddenly looked unnaturally pale and swallowed hard. "I can't get her under any control," she confessed meekly to Joohyun and Seulgi. "The serum seems to work perfectly on Yerim, but it doesn't work on Sooyoung. All attempts have failed so far and I cannot get Sooyoung under my control."  
"Please lead us to your daughter," Joohyun sighed. "I want to see her condition by myself before we make a decision."  
Seungwan nodded weakly and led Joohyun and Seulgi down the corridor to a lift. Its metal doors opened only after she held a special key card in front of a scanner and a laser captured the random barcode. Seungwan cleared her throat nervously and let Joohyun and Seulgi go first before she also entered the narrow cabin and typed a specific combination of numbers into the keypad for the different levels. Groaning, the doors closed again. The wire ropes groaned, the coils rattled and the lift began to move heavily, while Joohyun anxiously grabbed Seulgi's hand and clung to her wife as the cabin slowly descended.  
"Is Sooyoung conscious at the moment?", Seulgi wanted to know as the lift stopped, the metal doors swung squeakily aside and they followed a long, empty corridor. The rooms had no numbers and there were no labelled signs, but instead security cameras and electronic locks on all the doors, and bars in front of the windows. No nurses were frantically running back and forth in the corridor and the absence of visitors made the entire ward seem deserted, its access closed to unauthorised guests.  
"The sedation has already subsided but she is locked in her room and has been tied to her bed for safety," Seungwan answered Seulgi's question. She chewed nervously on her lower lip as she stopped in front of a locked door and again pulled out her key card and held it in front of a scanner. The heavy metal locks of the door clicked, Seungwan pushed down the handle and together they entered a dark, stuffy anteroom with a glass panel that gave them a view into Sooyoung's tiny room.  
The black-haired girl yanked desperately at her bonds. Clenching her jaw furiously, she struggled against the rigid leather that cut mercilessly into her wrists, trying to free herself so she could get away from her mother again and escape from this cruel, cold place. "Let me out of here now!" she screamed. Her eyes sparkled dangerously and Sooyoung glared angrily at her three guests behind the glass window.  
Critically, Seulgi eyed the girl. "There's no way we'll get her under our control," she said. "Sooyoung's body won't react to the serum. She will not let herself be manipulated like Yerim, but her knowledge and her ambitious will to destroy us endangers all our work and likewise Joohyun's and my daughter. We no longer have any choice but to deactivate Sooyoung." With a bitter expression on their faces, Joohyun and Seungwan sadly agreed with her.  
"Sooyoung is my daughter," Seungwan said firmly. "I will take over the deactivation of Project Ultraviolet."  
"Once you administer the serum to her, it will trigger aggressive cellular destruction in her body and her entire organism will die. All evidence of her existence will be destroyed and our work will remain a secret." Joohyun handed Seungwan a small, sealed glass bottle of green injection fluid and a syringe wrapped in plastic. "We'll disappear back upstairs to check on Yerim. Inform us and let us know of her condition as soon as the deactivation process has been started."  
With those words, Joohyun and Seulgi took their leave, letting Seungwan alone. The blonde sighed wistfully as she took the syringe out of the sterile packaging and filled it up with the green serum. Before entering Sooyoung's room, she had her tool tucked away in a pocket of her lab coat so as not to alarm her daughter. Sooyoung was still battling against her restraints and trying desperately to scream for help. "Be quiet," Seungwan ordered her in a sinister tone. "Your wailing is in vain, no one will hear your cries."  
Shocked, Sooyoung's eyes widened as her mother approached her bedside and bent over her examiningly. "Stay away from me!" Panicked, Sooyoung tugged at her fixations. Frantically, she tried to break free to fight back as Seungwan grabbed her arm and restrained her painfully. An ominous feeling suddenly nestled in the pit of her stomach like a nasty parasite, her heart was racing and her instincts were warning her of impending danger. "What are you going to do?" asked Sooyoung in horror as Seungwan pulled out the syringe filled with the green serum from her pocket and placed it against the visible vein in the crook of her arm.  
"Calm down," Seungwan whispered gently. "It will be over very soon and you won't feel any pain either," she promised, before jabbing the needle into Sooyoung's arm and pressing down the piston of the syringe to inject the serum into her body. Her thumb drew tender circles on Sooyoung's forearm. She removed the needle from her arm and gave her daughter a kiss on the forehead. Just a few seconds later, the first microscopic bits of black necrosis formed at the needle's insertion spot, where the serum caused the cells to disintegrate starting.  
"What did you give me?" demanded Sooyoung harshly to know from her mother. "What's that green crap supposed to do?" She glared angrily at Seungwan, but the blonde ignored her questions. She quickly gave her daughter another kiss in goodbye before hastily leaving the room again without a word and with a sad expression on her face.  
Nervously, Sooyoung looked at the slowly growing and spreading necrosis on her arm. The skin around the injection wound had turned an unhealthy shade of black, but burned like red-hot fire. The muscles and tissue throbbed uncomfortably and the pain seemed to continue to travel throughout her body as beads of sweat gathered on her forehead and adrenaline rushed through her veins. Sooyoung screamed in pain as her whole body tensed and hot tears gathered in her eyes. The first layers of necrotising skin ruptured, flesh-coloured tissue came into contact with air and blood dripped onto her white mattress as the necrosis spread down her arm and reached her hand and shoulder.  
"Help!" cried Sooyoung hoarsely. She choked on her own spit as she suddenly coughed and tasted iron on her tongue. Splashes of blood landed on her sheets while the red, warm liquid ran down her chin and dripped onto her top. Sooyoung continued to struggle against her bonds, tugging and pulling at the stiff leather to somehow free herself. Slowly, dark spots began to dance at the edge of her vision, her sight blurred and she was about to lose consciousness from the pain. Her body felt hot and cold at the same time. "Yerim...", Sooyoung murmured wearily. She leaned back in her bed and closed her eyes in exhaustion. Would their parents kill Yerim too? Would this really be the last day on earth for both of them and they would die?  
"I have to protect her," Sooyoung whispered. Lazily, she rattled at her fixations when suddenly the door opened and Seungwan entered the room with a tray full of food. "A last meal," Sooyoung joked bitterly, but her voice trembled faintly. "How thoughtful of you..." She eyed her mother mockingly, but Seungwan merely set the food down silently on a movable little table and the next moment had hastily disappeared from the hospital room again, ignoring her daughter, not commenting on her sarcasm or exchanging a final word with her.  
Groaning, Sooyoung sat up in her bed. "I just need to untie a shackle to get out of here." She stared thoughtfully at the dull plastic cutlery on her tray for a while before reaching for the fork and sliding the pointed prongs under the mesh of the seams of one of her restraints. The plastic was actually sharp enough to cut through the thin seams and separate the fabric and leather. The loops widened, with a slight smile on her lips Sooyoung freed herself from her first restraint and undid the clasp of the other with her free hand. 

Her whole body burned, her muscles throbbed and contracted in spasms, while the necrosis had by now spread almost all over her left arm. Blood rushed in her ears. Sooyoung gritted her teeth in pain as tears glistened in her eyes and she slid off the mattress. She hurriedly wiped the sweat from her forehead and the blood from her chin before putting on her normal clothes and hiding the necrosis of her arm with some bandages Seungwan had left in the small room with the glass window. Also, her mother had forgotten to lock her door again, so Sooyoung could just stroll out of the room and escape from the hospital through the stairwell and a back door.  
"I have to find Yerim," Sooyoung whispered determinedly, disappearing into the dusk. "Hopefully I'll find her before it's already too late for both of us..."  
  
"Sooyoung has gotten herself free and run away," Seungwan stated in shock as she stood with Seulgi in the abandoned hospital room, surveying the empty, rumpled bed.  
"Don't worry," Seulgi tried to reassure her. She put a hand on her shoulder encouragingly. "Just like Yerim, she has also been implanted a tracker. We will surely find her again quickly." Convinced by her own words, Seulgi opened the tracking programme on her phone, but the screen with the glowing dot for Sooyoung's whereabouts remained jet black. "Possibly the already advanced cell destruction is the reason for the defective tracker," Seulgi speculated. "The necrosis has surely destroyed the tracker's electronics."  
Nervously, Seungwan began chewing on her lower lip, her brows furrowed in deep worry lines. "The cellular destruction will surely progress faster and faster soon, destroying her organism. Sooyoung won't survive long out there, but we need to find her quickly to cover up her death and keep the secret from Yerim."  
"But our chances of finding her by night are very poor." Seulgi looked anxiously out the window into the already prevailing darkness.  
  
Although the sun had forced the moon from its place only a few hours ago and perched herself only a little above the horizon, her oppressive heat was already shimmering in the air above the asphalt when Sooyoung stealthily entered the garden of Joohyun and Seulgi's property. Paranoid, she glanced around before cautiously sneaking around the house to Yerim's room window.  
Sighing, Sooyoung eyed the raffish figure of her reflection in a windowpane as she passed the living room. Dark circles adorned her eyes, she looked unnaturally pale and the necrosis already disfigured a part of her face. Her clothes stuck to her skin, wet with sweat, the bandages could no longer hide the dead tissue on her arms and she felt as if she had been run over by a truck as the necrosis continued to aggressively kill her cells and eat its way relentlessly through her body.  
Groaning, Sooyoung leaned against the cold wall of the house as her body suddenly spasmed painfully and her fingernails clawed into the rough stone. Stars danced before her inner eyes, her throat tightened, panicked she tried to gasp for air and choked on her own spit. Her pulse shot up as she anxiously pressed her hand over her chapped lips to silence all sounds. Gasping, she tried to stifle her cough when suddenly she tasted iron on her tongue and spat blood into her hand. Snot ran down her chin along with the red liquid.  
"I-I can't bear it any longer...," Sooyoung muttered shakily. Her condition seemed to be rapidly deteriorating, while the necrosis was probably attacking her internal organs by now. Hastily she wiped her bloody palm on her top, she didn't have much time left. With unsteady steps, Sooyoung carefully stumbled through the garden and finally reached Yerim's room. The window was tilted open, she knocked gently on the pane, but Yerim did not notice her girlfriend, she just hurriedly left the room and ran towards the kitchen. "Damn...", Sooyoung cursed under bated breath. She propped herself against the wall of the house and followed Yerim from outside before crouching under the open kitchen window and listening to the conversation inside.  
"Why is Seungwan here?" asked Yerim with a derogatory undertone.  
"I invited her for breakfast," Sooyoung heard Seulgi say. There was a small pause before Seulgi addressed Yerim questioningly. "Would you like to join us for breakfast too, sweetie? We still have room at the table."  
Yerim didn't give her mother a verbal answer, instead Sooyoung heard dishes clanking in the kitchen and her girlfriend suddenly started sobbing. "I'm sorry, Umma, I don't know if I can ever forgive you and Mum. But I just want my parents back. I never wanted to give up my light little heart and I wish I could just forget everything."  
"There would be a way to forget everything," Joohyun said nervously.  
Seungwan cleared her throat. "I worked with your mother to develop something to make someone forget," she explained. "After we found you kids and brought you back, we gave you a small amount of the serum, but the first use at the hospital didn't last long on you. However, I have since modified the serum and maybe it will work this time," Seungwan suggested.  
Horrified, Sooyoung stared up at the clear sky as she helplessly listened to Yerim willingly agree to Seungwan's suggestion. She flinched in fright when Seulgi mentioned her name. "If you take the serum, then you will forget almost all the events of the last few weeks. You will also forget Sooyoung and your relationship forever."  
"I know," Yerim sighed and Sooyoung felt a pang in her chest, her heart suddenly tightening in her ribcage. "I love Sooyoung, but I don't even know where she is and I can't have both. So I'm choosing to take the serum to be a family with you again and come back home so everything can be like it was before..."  
"No..." whispered Sooyoung, seemingly frozen in her cover. Tears pricked her eyes and she clenched her fists angrily and gritted her teeth.  
"All right," Joohyun said firmly. "It has been your decision and you have made your choice. After breakfast we will administer the serum to you."  
"Not if I can prevent it!" muttered Sooyoung weakly. Exhausted, she leaned the back of her head against the cold stones and pondered. "Joohyun and Seulgi manipulated Yerim, that's why she wants to forget me. I have to save her..." Bravely, she jumped up and ran. While Yerim was eating breakfast with her parents and Seungwan, Sooyoung frantically searched for an open window or other unlocked entrance.  
The window to Joohyun's office was wide open, so Sooyoung carefully slipped into the room. Uncertainly, she looked around. "I must find something useful to help Yerim," she murmured, searching through the drawers of Joohyun's desk, as well as the lower cupboards of the bookshelves. A slight smile formed on Sooyoung's lips when she retrieved Yerim's backpack. Excitedly, she flipped through all the documents and evidences she thought they had lost. The gun for emergencies was also still in the secret compartment of the backpack and Sooyoung took it. In reverence, her fingers ran over the ice-cold metal as she suddenly heard Yerim, along with her parents and Seungwan, seemingly having finished breakfast by now, and now all four of them were coming down the corridor to Joohyun's office.  
"We are keeping the serum safe in the lab in the secret basement," Seulgi explained and Sooyoung hastily hid under Joohyun's desk with the backpack and gun in her hands as they entered the room. The next moment the secret entrance to the basement opened and Yerim disappeared downstairs with her parents and Seungwan.  
With bated breath, Sooyoung waited in her hiding place until they disappeared into the darkness. She then drew her gun, trembling, before crawling out from under the desk. Her heart raced in her chest, her palms felt sweaty and she clutched the cold metal of the gun fearfully as Sooyoung slowly descended the steep steps into the secret basement and followed them into the dark. She passed the long corridor and the heavy iron door and followed the long walkway with the glass windows with quiet steps, the door at the end of the walkway was wide open and Yerim's excited voice reached Sooyoung upstairs.  
"I am ready," her girlfriend said determinedly.  
Tears glistened in Sooyoung's eyes as she bravely held up the gun. She took a deep breath before showing herself to Yerim, her mother and Joohyun and Seulgi. "If you take this serum now, Yerim, then you are a traitor and a pathetic coward for breaking our promise." Sooyoung pointed the gun at her girlfriend. Startled, everyone turned to face the black-haired girl as she aimed right at Yerim's chest.  
"Sooyoung!" Horrified, Yerim stared at her. "What happened to you?" she wanted to know worriedly when she saw the necrosis on her face and arms.  
"I'm surprised you're still alive," Seungwan scoffed, pushing Yerim aside protectively.  
"What happened to Sooyoung and what does Seungwan mean by her words?" Questioning, Yerim turned to her parents, but Joohyun and Seulgi avoided her piercing gaze in dismay. Both fell meekly silent.  
Sooyoung chuckled in amusement. "My mother is obviously not pleased that her plan to kill me didn't fully work out." She pointed the gun at Seungwan's head and gestured to pull the trigger. "She gave me a serum, which caused cellular destruction in my body, because she and your parents are afraid of me revealing the truth and ruining their years of work. They want me to die because in their eyes we are not their daughters but just a replaceable experiment."  
"Is what Sooyoung says true?" stuttered Yerim. She looked uncertainly at her parents. "Umma? Mum? Were you going to let Sooyoung die while I would have just forgotten about her?" Her mothers avoided her gaze, looking to the ground with distress, while Yerim backed away from them a bit. "Joohyun? Seulgi? Answer me! Can you still save Sooyoung?!" Tears began to run steadily down Yerim's cheeks as Joohyun shook her head in disapproval.  
"I'm sorry, sweetie..." her mother tried to begin, reaching out to her daughter, but Yerim continued to back away.  
"Joohyun and Seulgi have manipulated you. They only want to save their work, not their family," Sooyoung shouted.   
"I don't think I still want things to go back to the way they were before..." muttered Yerim resolutely. "You are cruel monsters. I just want to get away from you." But when she tried to run to Sooyoung, Seulgi and Seungwan stopped her. They grabbed her by the arms and held her while Joohyun went to get the serum. "Let go of me," Yerim spat angrily. She tried desperately to fight back against Seulgi and Seungwan's tight grip and squirmed in panic. "Sooyoung!" she cried fearfully as her mother approached her with the serum. "Sooyoung!"  
"I'm sorry, sweetie," Joohyun repeated her words. Pity and sorrow were in her gaze. "But I can't let Sooyoung take my daughter away from me again and-"  
The echo of the gunshot reverberated numbly through the lab. Hypnotised by the sound and caught in a silent trance, Joohyun blindly followed her wife's gaze to the red stain that was slowly forming on her white top as blood soaked the fabric. Her body began to tremble, motionless Joohyun stared at the warm red liquid on her hands while Sooyoung still pointed the gun at her. The glass vial containing the serum slipped from her hand and shattered on the hard tiles as Joohyun sank to her knees and collapsed on the floor, bleeding.  
"No!" Hectically, Seulgi let go of Yerim and rushed to her wife in panic. "Please don't..." she murmured in a voice choked with tears. Blindly, Seulgi felt for Joohyun's pulse as a puddle of blood formed beneath her. Desperately, she pressed her hand on the wound to apply pressure and stop the bleeding. "Call an ambulance!" she ordered Seungwan, who could barely hold Yerim alone.  
Without Seulgi, Yerim was easily able to free herself from Seungwan's grip. Hastily, she sprinted to Sooyoung and fell around her girlfriend's neck, crying. "I want to get away from these monsters forever," she sobbed.  
Sooyoung nodded. "We'll escape from this city," she promised. Tenderly, she pulled Yerim into her arms, breathing in her familiar and comforting scent, and was about to lower the gun again when Seungwan attacked and wanted to pursue them.  
Without hesitation, Sooyoung fired a shot at her, but it missed her mother. The bullet hit a small oxygen tank on the wall of the lab. Metal splintered before, a second later, the oxygen from the highly pressurised tank exploded with a bang. A cloud of fire rose into the air. Its unbearable heat quickly spread to the many flammable materials in the lab, which then caught ablaze. Fire began to spread through the lab as Sooyoung and Yerim hastily fled the house. With presence of mind, Yerim grabbed the keys from the hook in the hallway. She had to support Sooyoung the last few metres before they frantically jumped into Seulgi's car. Yerim started the engine. Just as she pulled out onto the road, the house behind her burst into flames. The horizon was obscured by thick, black clouds of smoke, which billowed up behind them like sinister demons.  
"I hope we're finally rid of our parents now," Yerim sighed as she noticed Sooyoung leaning her head exhaustedly against the seat. Her girlfriend's gaze flickered and Yerim's grip on the steering wheel tightened anxiously. "Sooyoung!" she called out, "we'll go to a hospital, I'm sure they can help you there. You won't die, I promise, but you must stay awake." Her voice quavered, her vision blurred and she nervously reached for Sooyoung's hand and squeezed it gently. "It's over, we did it, you beat our parents. At the hospital, the doctors will find a solution to stop the necrosis and reverse it."  
Sooyoung endeavoured a victorious grin. She triumphantly handed her girlfriend the stolen backpack containing the evidences from Joohyun's office. "We don't know if our parents survived," she whispered weakly. "But you have to deliver the evidences to the police and leave the city." Blood ran down her lips as Sooyoung closed her eyes in exhaustion.  
"You have to stay awake!" begged Yerim. "Please! I can't make it without you! Don't leave me, Sooyoung!" Panic-stricken, she steered the car into the parking lot of a supermarket close to the road and hopped out. "Please stay with me!" She screamed for help as she ran around to the passenger side and dragged a semi-conscious Sooyoung out of the vehicle and into her lap. Gently, she combed through Sooyoung's black hair. "I can't do this alone, you have to stay with me."  
Sooyoung blinked weakly. Carefully, her hand cupped Yerim's cheek. "We saved so many people," she said with a smile on her lips. "We will get through this together too."  
"I'm sorry!" apologised Yerim. "If I hadn't been so naive, I would never have trusted Joohyun and Seulgi again." A tear ran down her cheek and dripped onto Sooyoung's hand. "I am selfish and yet you came back for me to save me."  
"Yerim...," Sooyoung sighed. "I love you. I will come back for you every damn time."  
"I love you too." With those words, Yerim closed the short distance between them and kissed Sooyoung gently on the lips. "Please stay with me," she whispered as silent tears mingled with their kiss and Sooyoung finally closed her eyes. The sensation in her lips escaped, her breathing stopped and her limbs went limp in Yerim's arms in the dirty car park.

Tired, Yerim rubbed her eyes. With a tissue she wiped the last wet traces of tears from her face and disposed the scrap of paper in the dustbin of the police officer's room. The nice man squatted opposite her at his desk. He gave her an encouraging smile, handed her a new handkerchief and finally finished his questioning. He had recorded all the necessary information from her statement in a transcript.  
"My condolences," he tried to comfort her. "It's always hard to lose a friend."  
"She was my girlfriend," Yerim corrected the policeman. Her hands clutched the backpack with the evidences. She was about to hand it to him when suddenly the phone rang on his desk.  
"Your mother is here to pick you up," he said and Yerim froze in her seat. Eyes wide, she looked at the policeman in shock. "You wait here nicely, I will fetch her." He left the room. A colleague was already waiting for him in the corridor. "That poor girl," Yerim heard him say. "Her girlfriend died and she lost her home and a parent on the same day. A gas pipe was malfunctioning, a fire broke out in her house and the neighbour who was visiting died in the flames. Doctors are still trying to save her mother, but she is in a deep coma. Fortunately, the girl still has her other mother." The door slammed shut behind the policeman, stifling the rest of the conversation.  
"Seulgi...," Yerim cursed lowly. Her grip on her backpack of evidences tightened. "I have to get out of here..."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was the end of my Red Velvet x Marvel's Runaways AU. I had a lot of fun writing the whole story and there will probably be similar stories/AU's of this kind to follow this year. I hope all of you enjoyed the AU too, as well as the ending, and had fun reading it. I would be happy about your feedback!  
> And maybe you have some ideas or theories for the future fate of Yeri and Seulgi, as there was a slight open ending after all.


End file.
